Polls open in Kenya's general election

NAIROBI - A total of 14.3 million Kenyan voters lined up to cast their ballots Monday morning to choose the country's next president, the first after disputed presidential elections tally stirred up violence five years ago.

The polling stations opened at 6:00 am local time (0300 GMT) and will close at 5:00 pm (1400 GMT) on Monday. Voters will also elect 47 senators, 47 governors and other officials in the general election.

The election authority, Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has set up 33,000 polling stations across the country and about 99,000 police officers have been deployed all over the country.

Eight candidates are competing for the presidency. The leading presidential candidates, Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD)'s Raila Odinga, and the candidate of Jubilee Alliance, Uhuru Kenyatta are locked in a tight presidential contest.

The two leading candidates have publicly vowed that no repeat of fatal violence would happen. However, just hours before the polls opened, four policemen were killed in Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa in an attack by group suspected secessionist group, the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) that had early threatened to disrupt the general elections in the coastal region.

Regional police commander, Aggrey Adoli said the slain police officers were ambushed by over 100 militia at Mombasa's Miritini area at around 02:00 hrs local time.

The presidential election is the first in Kenya where presidential candidates face a second round run-off between the first and the second if no-one achieves a simple majority in the first round and 25 percent of the votes in at least 24 counties, under the new constitution which was passed on August 5, 2010.

IEBC's chairman Isaac Hassan has called on Kenyans to come out in large numbers and vote to make their voice be heard. In Many urban polling stations, large number of residents even came out around 1 a.m. to cast their votes. Long queues are presenting in front of these polling stations.

"Priority will be given to the presidential ballots whose will relayed directly to the National Tallying Center where aggregation of the results will be done. The provisional results will be announced at the Constituency and County tallying centers," he said.

According to the constitution, IEBC will have seven days to officially announce the results, but the country's next president is expected to be known by Monday evening or Tuesday.

The elections are significant because they will be the very first to be organized under Kenya's 2010 Constitution, which provides for safeguards against unfair, insecure, corrupted, non transparent or inefficiently administrated elections.  

In the post-election bloodshed following the 2007 election, more than 1,200 people were killed, 3,500 were injured and up to 650,000 were forcibly displaced.