Violence and allegations of vote rigging marred elections in Kenya yesterday as millions of voters turned out to cast ballots in the closest elections that the East African country has known since it gained independence from Britain in 1963.

Voters across the country waited for hours in lines several miles long to vote in what is effectively a two-horse race between Mwai Kibaki, the President, and Raila Odinga, the veteran opposition leader.

An early exit poll put President Kibaki ahead with 51.3 per cent of the vote, against 39.6 for Mr Odinga. The Institute for Education in Democracy, a respected nongovernmental organisation, gave the figures based on a sample of 273 of the 270,000 polling stations. A TV station gave Mr Odinga 50 per cent of votes cast, but on a voter sample of only 10,000. A close result could herald days of clashes as both sets of supporters cry foul. An official result is due later today.

Violence flared after Mr Odinga, 62, was at first unable to vote in the Nairobi slum of Kibera, the second-largest in Africa, which forms the heart of his constituency. He showed up early in the morning but left after he failed to find his name on the rolls. Electoral officials, often accused of being government agents, said that they were not given some voter lists so were forced to delay opening the polls.

Rumours began to spread that among those lists missing were people whose surnames began with the letter O, which included Mr Odinga and many of his closest supporters in his Luo tribe, the historic rivals of the President’s Kikuyu tribe.

The Electoral Commission acknowledged that some voter lists had not been delivered. Later its officials said that Mr Odinga’s name was among those delivered. The seasoned politician and former political detainee returned and cast his ballot. “The ball is now in the court of the people of Kenya,” Mr Odinga said after voting.

Later, gunmen shot and killed a man on the outskirts of Kibera, but it was not clear if the incident was linked to the election. Two others were wounded in the shooting.

The poll has generally been given the thumbs-up from international monitoring groups. “The day has fulfilled our hopes in that it has been conducted in a peaceful atmosphere with no intimidation,” Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, the head European Union election observer, said. Michael Ran-neberger, the US Ambassador, agreed: “Overall the elections have been a largely peaceful and positive process.”

Tribal loyalties play an important role in Kenyan politics, particularly as this is a showdown between the Luo and Kikuyu, whose rivalry predates Kenyan independence. The Kikuyu make up 20 per cent of the 36 million population and are the largest single grouping, but the Luo – the second-largest tribe – have put together, under Mr Odinga, an impressive coalition of smaller tribes and younger Kikuyu dismayed by the elitism and corruption of the current leadership.

President Kibaki, 76, told reporters that he wanted to keep serving and was confident that he would win after five years of economic growth. After taking over from the authoritarian Daniel arap Moi in 2002, he originally said that he would govern only for one term. He is also not in good health.

Mr Odinga, who has a Socialist past and a streetfighter image, frightens the Kenyan elite, but is, on policy matters, almost indistinguishable from the President whom he once served.

The result is hard to predict because of younger first-time voters who are much less tribalist in outlook, and, ironically, the President’s own legacy – a booming black middle class angered about rampant corruption at the highest levels of government.

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