Kenyan presidential candidate Raila Odinga was leading in the polls Friday, with preliminary results giving him a wide margin ahead of incumbent Mwai Kibaki as electoral officials feverishly counted ballots in the country's closest-ever vote, according to dpa. Local station KTN gave Odinga 58.7 of the vote and Kibaki 39.1 but the race is still anyone's to win, with more than 2 million votes - less than one-third of the total - counted. Kenyans unseated some 14 former ministers from parliament, including David Mwiraria, a former environment and finance minister allegedly implicated in one of the myriad graft scandals that have rocked the East African nation. Former education minister George Saitoti, also allegedly involved in corruption, the former foreign minister, the former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate and environmental activist Wangari Maathai were also ousted. The Electoral Commission of Kenya said official presidential results would not be released until late Friday or early Saturday. It praised a large voter turnout of up to 70 per cent out of 14 million registered voters. Kenyans voted Thursday in the closest elections since the country gained independence from Britain in 1963 amid fears of violence and fraud. Election day was generally peaceful, but the country's police chief called for calm Friday as tensions flared with the presidential results filtering out. "The test of our democratic maturity is how we conduct ourselves in the post-election period," said Hussein Ali. The opposition Orange Democratic Movement, led by Odinga, had warned that the polls were rife for rigging, but the European Union observer mission said the vote was generally conducted well. Kibaki, 76, is seeking a second term after creating a regional economic powerhouse from the ruins of the kleptocratic regime of former president Daniel arap Moi, but critics charged he was unable to purge graft from his administration. Odinga, 62, a flamboyant leader, has vowed to continue liberalizing the economy, and Kenyans voting for him have said they are voting for a change from the endemic corruption that plagues the country.
