Glitches in Election Force Kenya to Extend Balloting

The Electoral Commission on Monday was forced to extend the time for Kenyans to vote in some regions of the country after widespread irregularities--including long delays at polling stations, mixed-up voting papers and missing ballot boxes--cropped up in the presidential contest.

While officials blamed problems simply on bad weather and on logistics mishaps, critics said Monday’s confusion further illustrated the inadequacy of the electoral system. They said it deepened doubts as to whether this vote, Kenya’s second multi-party poll since it reverted to pluralism in 1991, would be truly free and fair.

“The Electoral Commission is totally unable to do what has to be done,” said Richard Leakey, a Kenyan political activist and world-renowned paleontologist. The commission “has never been an independent body, never been given the resources it needed to undertake this task. The mess-up we have seen today is to be expected from a very poor organization. It’s very sad. It’s going to make the results even more ambiguous.”

The Electoral Commission said in a statement that, while balloting had concluded, as scheduled, in most parts of the country, it would not count any votes for the time being. Police, meantime, were ordered to maintain top security over electoral materials.

Nine million Kenyans were registered to vote at 12,700 polling stations in Monday’s election, in which incumbent President Daniel Arap Moi was challenged by 12 opponents in his bid for a fifth five-year term to lead this East African nation into the 21st century.

Election officials insisted in their statement that “there is nothing sinister in these irregularities.” But observers said no glitch--no matter how small--should be ignored.

“Any irregularities that are detected during this election day will be of great concern to all Kenyans,” said the Rev. Peter Njoka, provost of Nairobi’s All Saints Cathedral. “We have been hoping that these elections will be carried out in a very fair, clear and transparent way.”

Still, there is little doubt about the balloting’s outcome for Moi, 73. After voting in his home village of Sacho in northwest Kenya, he told reporters that “obviously, I will win.”

But Moi--whose regime has been criticized for widespread corruption, the loss of international loans and investment, and the decay of roads, schools and hospitals--must win at least 25% of the vote in at least five of Kenya’s eight provinces.

That might put Moi in the position of facing a runoff against one of the other contenders in this race, from which two little-known candidates dropped out Sunday.

Kenyans also voted on parliamentary and local government posts; 23 parties competed for 210 elected seats in the 222-member National Assembly, to which the new president will appoint 12 representatives. There were 8,466 candidates seeking local council positions.

Even before the balloting, critics had complained about irregularities in the electoral process, with some opposition candidates accusing Moi’s Kenya African National Union party of buying votes.

In August, politically motivated violence rocked Kenya’s coastal region and forced thousands to flee. Most of the 100,000 displaced people were known to support opposition candidates.

Critics also argued that the government had offered an inadequate, six-week registration period earlier this year, noting that many would-be voters were subjected to excessive waits or procedural delays aimed at discouraging them from signing up.

A study by the Nairobi-based Center for Law and Research International, which had monitored the run-up to the vote, criticized several Electoral Commission policies and practices. For example, it denounced officials for declining to use better ballot boxes. It decried the choice of Dec. 29 as the election date because most Kenyans at year’s end travel to homes in the countryside and thus could not vote in cities where they most likely are registered.

The center also questioned the commission’s scant plans for a possible presidential runoff--a move that suggests the victor might already have been decided.

Monday’s voting passed with reports of only minor violence. But the weather played havoc with balloting, especially in areas of flooded North-Eastern province. Kenyans there could not cast their votes because officials could not get ballot boxes to them; the voting materials were stuck on a local airstrip.

Voting in the waterlogged region, stricken by recent unseasonable rains, was scheduled to take place today.