Tensions high as Kenya prepares to go to the polls again

Supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga were out in force on the streets of Kisumu. Photo / AP

Polling stations in Kenyan opposition strongholds were shuttered last night and youths burned street barricades, heeding an election boycott set to hand victory to President Uhuru Kenyatta, but with a mandate compromised by low turnout and procedural flaws.

Those shortcomings in Kenya's election rerun, already acknowledged by judges and the Election Commission, are likely to trigger legal challenges and could spark violence in a country riven by deep ethnic divisions.

The fresh election follows an August vote whose result, a Kenyatta victory, was annulled by the Supreme Court due to procedural irregularities. Opposition leader Raila Odinga said he would not take part in the rerun election.

In the western city of Kisumu, and the epicentre of support for opposition leader Odinga, polling stations that were meant to open at dawn stayed firmly shut and election officials were nowhere to be found.

The previous evening, one nervous voting officer described his work in the city, the centre of major ethnic violence after a disputed election in 2007, as a "suicide mission".

Kisumu Central returning officer John Ngutai said only three of his 400 staff had shown up for work and there was no security to deliver ballot boxes.

"We don't have any options," he told Reuters, as he and two presiding officers sorted thousands of ballot papers into piles, work that should have been completed the previous day.

Kisumu businessman Joshua Nyamori, 42, was one of the few voters brave enough to defy an Odinga call for a stay-away but could find nowhere to cast his ballot in the city of a million on the shores of Lake Victoria.

Riot police move in a group during running battle with opposition supporters in Kibera slums in Nairobi, Kenya. Photo / AP

"I know it's not a popular move," he said.

"Residents fear reprisal from political gangs organised by politicians. This is wrong."

A decade after 1200 people were killed over another disputed election, many Kenyans are braced for trouble although Odinga backed off previous calls for protests and urged his supporters to stay out of the way of police.

"We advise Kenyans who value democracy and justice to hold vigils and prayers away from polling stations, or just stay at home," Odinga said.

Odinga's National Super Alliance coalition, which has been accused of harassing polling staff in the runup to the vote, is likely to present a lack of open polling stations as proof the rerun, organised in less than 60 days, is bogus.

The head of the election commission said last week he could not guarantee a free and fair vote, citing interference from politicians and threats of violence against his colleagues. One election commissioner has quit and fled the country.

Kenyatta, the US-educated son of Kenya's founding father, has made clear he sees today's vote as legitimate.