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Kenya

Uhuru holds steady lead on final day of tally

UHURU-FOR-PRESIDENTNAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 8 – The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is on Friday expected to release the final tally of the March 4 presidential poll.

By Friday morning, the commission had done close to 70 percent of the tallying, in which Jubilee coalition presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta continued to lead against his closest challenger, Coalition for Reforms and Democracy’s (CORD) candidate, Raila Odinga.

Kenyatta has been in the lead from the start of the tallying with a steady 500,000 votes but at some stage during Thursday night’s tallying, Odinga managed to narrow the gap to about 250,000 votes.

But votes from Kenyatta’s strongholds helped him regain the lead polling 4,769,769 votes against Odinga’s 4,132,062 by 9am on Friday.

In an effort to meet their Friday target, the commission started off by releasing results of 30 constituencies, leaving them with only 90 constituencies to declare the official results by end of day.

The commission’s chairman Issack Hassan has however previously cautioned that the law gives them a deadline of up to Monday should they encounter challenges in the tallying of the results.

Hassan had initially said that the results would be relayed 48 hours after Monday’s vote but following several hitches, the commission has kept postponing the release. The IEBC is allowed by law up to seven days after the close of polling to announce the results.

By Thursday night, only 11 returning officers had not presented their presidential results from their constituencies with 280 already having done so.

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