Crisis over election deepens in Kenya By Jeffrey Gettleman Thursday, January 3, 2008 c/o IHT

Crisis over election deepens in Kenya
By Jeffrey Gettleman

Thursday, January 3, 2008
NAIROBI: Nairobi degenerated into violence Thursday as the riot police used tear gas, batons and water cannons to push back thousands of opposition supporters who poured into the streets to answer a call for a million-person rally that had been banned by the government.

Later in the day, the Kenyan attorney general broke ranks with the president and insisted on an independent investigation into disputed election results, an indication of the growing divide within the government about how to solve a crisis that has ignited chaos and ethnic fighting throughout the country, killing more than 300 people.

Starting about 10 a.m., protesters burned tires, smashed windows and clashed with the police across Nairobi. Some demonstrators showed restraint, yelling to the rowdier members in their ranks, "Drop your stones!" Others tore through the slums, raping women and attacking residents with machetes, witnesses said. The body of one young man who had been hacked to death lay in a muddy alleyway. His face was covered with plastic bags and his shoes had been stolen.

"We are headed to die!" yelled one young protester as he charged a wall of police officers in body armor. But when a police officer fired a can of tear gas overhead, the young protester ran back.

It has been a week since Kenyans went to the polls in the most contested elections in the country's history and the dispute over whether Mwai Kibaki, the president, honestly won the most votes continues to violently divide the nation.

The attorney general, Amos Wako, said that an independent body should investigate the disputed vote tabulations, which gave the president, at the eleventh hour of the counting process, a razor thin margin of victory. But a few hours later, Kibaki repeated at a news conference that he had won the elections fair and square and would not relinquish power.

"I will personally lead this nation in healing," he said.

Alfred Mutua, the government's top spokesman, said the attorney general was merely making a suggestion and that an independent investigation into election irregularities "was not necessarily going to happen."

"The president prefers the court system," Mutua said. But, he added, "the president has nothing to hide."

Foreign diplomats continued to urge Kibaki and Raila Odinga, the main opposition leader who says he was cheated out of the presidency, to come to some sort of entente. Until last week, Kenya was one of the most promising countries on the continent, but ethnic violence, fueled by political passions, is now threatening to ruin that. The economy, one of the biggest in Africa, has ground to a halt. Roads are blocked. Shops are closed. Factories are idle. And the currency is plunging.

Beyond that, the unrest here is hurting the entire region. In Rwanda, gasoline stations are rationing fuel because their supply from Kenya has been cut. In Uganda, Sudan and Congo, displaced people are running out of food because UN relief trucks cannot get past vigilante checkpoints. Production in places like Tanzania is slowing down because parts made in Kenya are being held up.

"Kenya is the dynamo of this whole region," said Harvey Rouse, a diplomat for the European Union.

Rouse spoke from a hill overlooking an enormous slum where police officers were battling protesters. He and several other Western diplomats said they had come out to observe. They were literally a stone's throw from the front lines.

Thursday was supposed to be the day that Odinga's supporters held a million-person march into central Nairobi and meet at a place called Uhuru Park. But they never got close.

Thousands of riot police fanned out at dawn and sealed off the main roads into the city. They refused to let demonstrators pass.

Some were clearly peaceful, like the hundreds of women carrying palm leaves and walking barefoot to town.

For others, it was not so clear. One young protester crouched in the street with a rock in one hand and a green leaf, the sign of peace, in the other. "We have been patient long enough!" he yelled.

It is difficult to tell which way things are going. In the past two days, there have been no big attacks, like the one on Tuesday in which 50 people hiding in a church were burned alive. But reports from the provinces indicate that low- level killings are going on. And much of the violence is tribal-based, with tribes that support the opposition, like the Luos, Maasai, Kalenjin and Luhya, killing Kikuyus, the tribe of the president.

U.S. aide to press for calm
The top U.S. diplomat for Africa is being sent to Kenya to press leaders directly to calm the violence that has followed allegations of election fraud, the State Department said Thursday, The Associated Press reported from Washington.

Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, was planning to leave Thursday for talks with Kibaki and Odinga, the opposition leader, Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, said.

McCormack said Frazer would not serve as a mediator,, but would try to encourage the leaders to get together and work toward a political solution. It was not clear how long Frazer will be in Kenya.