Five members of the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) have broken ranks with their colleagues over the disputed election result. -We cannot remain silent under the circumstances. Like all Kenyans, we are deeply affected, the commissioners said in a statement. Right, police and soldiers taking cover behind ballot boxes in Ngong town, outside Nairobi. (01-JAN-08)

Based on direct contact with Kenyans and articles in the independent Kenyan newspaper the Standard, all credited to ´the Standard team,´ this article has been written by HRH F / Niels Jacob Harbitz. Photo: Tom Maruko, European Pressphoto Agency.

-Some of the information received from some of our returning officers now cast doubts on the veracity of the figures, the statement also said, giving concrete examples of constituencies were the result appears to have been rigged in favour of Kibaki´s re-election. The five commissioners thus sided with the opposition and domestic election observers, most notably of the Kenya Election Domestic Observers Forum (KEDOF), who clarified that the elections were credible in as far as the voting was concerned, but added that ´the electoral process lost credibility towards the end with regard to the tallying and announcement of the presidential results´.

The discrepancies and illegalities that local observers noted included:
-Disparities between results released by the ECK and those announced by returning officers in several regions like Central, Eastern and Rift Valley.
-reduction or suppression of results in a significant number of areas.
-Illegal replacement of authentic Form 16A by photocopies, raising the question of authenticity of the results.
KEDOF also questioned why the ECK chairman accepted resultssubmitted illegally by some of the returning officers in cases where Form 16A was replaced with photocopies or was tampered with.

-Step aside, Kibaki. Then we´re talking
United States, withdrawing its initial congratulations to Kibaki, the United Kingdom and Canada are among the countries that have added weight to the growing concerns expressed internationally, both about the election result and the clearly ethnically based unrest that has followed. While UK´s Prime Minister Gordon Brown has offered to intervene to end the chaos that has so far claimed more than 300 lives, Canada´s foreign minister Maxime Bernier urged the Kenyan government to urgently address the election irregularities in a timely, transparent and thorough manner. Bernier also criticised the suspension on live broadcasts. Raila Odinga, the Orange Democratic Movement´s presidential candidate, responded that he accepted Brown´s initiative, but made it a condition that before any talks can begin, President Kibaki must ´step aside and publicly own up tp the fact that he was not elected President´.  

Severe infringements on basic human rights
The freedoms of expression and the media, movement and assembly are all severely reduced. Peter Arina, the deputy managing director of the cell phone service provider Safaricom, confirmed last night that his company had received an order from the Internal Security Ministry that it had circulated to its subscribers. The warning read “The Ministry of Internal Security urges you to please desist from sending or forwarding any SMS that may cause public unrest. This may lead to your prosecution’’. The order, in the form of a straight-forward threat, appears to have been effective. Cell phone traffic, which for lack of other news channels has so far been intense, distributing news and discussing the current situation, was immediately reduced. HRH F can add that all of a sudden, it appears difficult to get through to some of Kenya´s leading human rights defenders. Blackouts and kerfews in Nairobi and Kisumu, roadblocks preventing, among others, journalists, from travelling to cover the unfolding events wherever they like, and riot police preventing people from gathering in larger rallies to express their distress with the election results.