JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Kenya's opposition party won a landslide election victory, sweeping parliamentary contests and taking over the presidency from one of Africa's most enduring dictators, officials announced today.
An election commission official and an independent voting monitor said the National Rainbow Coalition's Mwai Kibaki -- a career politician and two-time presidential challenger -- had beaten Uhuru Kenyatta of the ruling Kenya African National Union party. An official announcement was due later in the day after the results were certified.
Outgoing President Daniel Arap Moi, Kenya's second president, handpicked political neophyte Kenyatta, 42, to succeed him. Kenyatta campaigned on his youth, his outsider status and his name -- his father, Jomo Kenyatta, was Kenya's first president.
But with most of the vote counted, Kibaki led by more than 30 percentage points and his party, known as NARC, had at least 116 seats in parliament to KANU's 42, with some races yet to be decided. Kibaki was ahead by more than 1.5 million votes out of about 5 million cast, according to figures from the independent monitor, the Institute for Education in Democracy.
Analysts say that ordinary Kenyans are tired of seeing their leaders pocketing public funds and rewarding their friends.
As the tally worsened for KANU, even Kenyatta and Moi announced their satisfaction with the election and their willingness to abide by the results.
Kenya's relatively peaceful election was a welcome addition to a series of promising developments in Africa -- potential resolution of two major wars, in Angola and in Congo, and creation of two multinational partnerships devoted to good governance and economic prosperity.
But a smooth transition of power will be only one small step in Kenya's recovery after 40 years of KANU party rule. Kibaki will lead a hastily formed coalition that owes its creation more to political expediency than to deep ideological agreement.
On Saturday, euphoric Kenyans were dancing in the streets, but most political experts believe that Kibaki's honeymoon will be brutally short as he is confronted with the long-neglected needs of his constituency. Basics such as housing, clean water and education are inaccessible to most Kenyans. Millions don't have enough to eat, and AIDS is taking a terrible toll.
