VIOLENCE mounted across Kenya yesterday as Raila Odinga, the millionaire opposition leader, claimed victory over President Mwai Kibaki in the closest presidential election in the nation’s history. It was reported that several people had been killed.

As a delay in announcing the results ignited Kenya’s deep ethnic tensions, allegations of vote rigging by the government brought thousands of Odinga’s supporters onto the streets in anger. They looted shops, smashed windows and torched cars.

The centre of Nairobi was deserted and shops were closed as police blocked surrounding streets. Mobs burnt tyres on the outskirts. In the Kibera slum, residents were shouting their support for the 62-year-old Odinga. But in other parts of the capital young men were ripping down his posters, waving machetes and shouting “Kibaki come back”.

With 86% of the votes counted last night, Odinga was only 38,000 votes ahead of the 76-year-old president, at which point the count was suspended. Odinga’s campaign said its own “official” tally showed him the clear winner and called on Kibaki to step down.

As officials waited for results from areas considered to be Kibaki strongholds, a presidential spokesman urged patience. “Kangaroo results given by any Tom, Dick or Harry deserve contempt,” he said.

The electoral commission said it had no idea why some areas had not reported their results. “When we phone those places, we find that the telephones are switched off,” said Samuel Kivuitu, its chairman.

If Kibaki loses he will be the first president ousted at the ballot box in the 44 years since independence from Britain. A string of his allies in parliament have also been unseated.

Kibaki is part of the Kikuyu tribe that has traditionally dominated Kenyan politics. Odinga is from the Luo tribe, the country’s third largest, which has always worked against his presidential ambitions.

Before his rise in the opinion polls, the Luo used to joke that the Americans would elect a Luo president – a reference to Barack Obama’s Kenyan father – before Kenya does.

A fiery former dissident who once spent six years in solitary confinement as a political prisoner, he had helped put Kibaki in power in 2002. But the two later fell out and Odinga went into opposition.

If Odinga wins the presidential race it will be because he has successfully wooed voters beyond his traditional tribal base by playing to their disillusionment with Kibaki’s poor record on corruption.

He was educated in communist East Germany and named a son after Fidel Castro and a daughter after Winnie Mandela. But this has not prevented him making a fortune, something he shares with Kibaki, who is one of Kenya’s richest men.

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