EU Critical of Kenya Vote

"The tallying process lacks credibility and despite the best efforts the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) has not fulfilled its responsibilities to create such a process," said Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, the 150-member EU mission's chief observer, on Sunday, Dec. 30, in an interview with Reuters.

The EU had initially hailed Thursday's peaceful presidential and parliamentary elections, and some initially held up the exercise as an example for the volatile continent.

"However, once polling stations closed and the tallying began ... we encountered some irregularities that cast a doubt on the accuracy of the final results that were announced this afternoon," Lambsdorff said.

The ECK declared Mwai Kibaki the winner of the election on Sunday, and he was sworn in for a second-five year term an hour later. But defeated opposition candidate Raila Odinga and his Orange Democratic Movement have disputed the polls, charging that any Kibaki win was due to vote rigging.

98 percent voter participation?

Clashes between protesters and police on Sunday night led to dozens of deaths in slums in the capital, Nairobi, and other parts of the country. Some reports have put the death toll as high as 124. Police declared a daytime curfew in the opposition stronghold Kisumu, in western Kenya, on Monday.

Odinga has demanded the ballots be recounted. According to the official tally, he garnered 4.35 million votes, 230,000 less than Kibaki.

"There is no difference between him and Idi Amin and other military dictators who have seized power through the barrel of the gun," Odinga said of Kibaki at a news conference on Monday.

The EU's Lambsdorff said there had been problems in polling stations, and that there were even greater issues in district capitals, where the ballots were counted. He added that results were particularly questionable in Kibaki's home province, where extraordinarily high voter participation -- up to 98 percent in some places -- was registered.