A media blackout has been announced in Kenya, but the bloggers and texters and twitterers continue to bring in the news. Kenyan Pundit fears that cell phones and the Internet could be next. I would be very surprised, but that would indeed be a sinister sign.

Mental Acrobatics and Thinker’s Room suggests that Raila Odinga, the opposition Presidential candidate, and William Ruto, an MP from the same party, have been arrested, and that Ruto may have been shot.

Raila and Ruto arrested after the press conference where they announced the alternative inauguration for tomorrow morning. They were taken to hospital by the security forces to be “treated for shock”. Message went on to say that Ruto had been shot but not fatally.

Planning an alternative inauguration can be interpreted as treason which would explain the security forces heavy approach (if this is true). During the press conference Raila introduced an army Major who stated that the armed forces are behind Raila. Our military is divided.

This is unverified. It is from a source who has been credible thus far.

Meanwhile, M.B. writes from Kenya [my comments in square brackets]:

Sorry for filling your inbox with messages from Kenya. I haven’t seen anything like this before, and have to share it. The latest news (from the cellphone, since they’ve suspended all live broadcasts) is that Raila [Odinga–the opposition Presidential candidate] has called for a massive political rally in Uhuru park tomorrow, and that rumors are spreading that the government intends to arrest him soon.

Here is a summary of the evidence, most but not all presented by ODM [Raila’s party], that the election was rigged: Yesterday, Samuel Kivuitu, the Electoral Commission of Kenya’s [ECK] chairman (who seems like a Kibaki pawn now) went on TV and reported that 51 out of 210 constituencies had yet to report their results to the ECK in Nairobi. This seemed very suspicious, since this was almost two days after the close of the polls.

While some of these constituencies were in the distant Northeast and Coast provinces, what made it most suspicious was that many of these places were in Central and Nairobi, where it should not have taken days to get the results to KICC. Kivuitu said that he “didn’t know what sort of cooking was going on” and said that many of the commission’s agents, called returning officers, in these areas “had their cellphones switched off.” He issued some vague threats, read the results they had in hand, and went off the air.

Later yesterday, they came back on to continue reading more results. After a few of these results were read, ODM interrupted the news conference, claiming that the numbers being read did not match those that were read at the constituency level. In particular, [sitting President Mwai] Kibaki got 95,000 votes in a single constituency, Juja, which had earlier been reported as 55,000 on the ground, and by the media. (Raila later claimed that this total was inflated to 76,000 between Juja and KICC, and then to 95,000 at KICC.)

ODM demanded an audit of the results, and Kivuitu agreed, suspending the announcement of results, and allowing two representatives from each party to join the commission in the audit of the results. There were, according to ODM, many other numbers which did not match, but Juja stood out for the size of the inflation. This morning, Raila called a news conference and demanded a full recount of the election results. He was calling PNU’s bluff, as they had threatened to demand a full recount when ODM first raised objections. We are pretty sure he meant that he wanted a transparent tallying of the constituency results, though it was somewhat unclear.

It would have been unrealistic to count the ballots again, especially since they could have been tampered with easier than the tally sheets, which were signed by witnesses from each party, with copies given to each of the witnesses. ECK was supposed to hold a news conference a few minutes after Raila finished, and I suspect he called his news conference to forestall the announcement of a Kibaki victory, though I have no solid evidence for this.

ECK did not come onstage at 10:30am as they had promised, (I suspect they were debating how to respond to Raila’s demand), and we all sat in anticipation until 1 o’clock, when ODM took the stage at KICC to announce that they had uncovered 48 constituencies lacking the proper paperwork in the overnight audit of the ECK files at KICC. In particular, a form called 16A was missing in all of these cases, which was the form with results and the parties’ witness signatures. Almost all of the constituencies were Kibaki strongholds in Central and Eastern provinces, as well as a few in Rift Valley and Coast. ODM said they were flying in these 16A forms from around the country, and called for ECK to wait until these forms could be collected, before announcing the results.

The ECK took the stage at KICC to announce the results around 4pm this afternoon. From the time they took the stage it was clear that they did not intend to address the issues raised by ODM. Kivuitu responded to ODM interruptions by telling them that their complaints were outside his purview, and that they needed to take up the issues in the courts. Someone yelled out “We want justice!” and “This is not a police state!” and after chaos broke out, ODM departed the room, and Kivuitu and ECK were led out of the room.

Soon thereafter, ODM returned to the stage, this time with a member of the ECK in tow, who attested to witnessing the doctoring of results. The ECK member was obviously nervous, but produced the names of several provinces in Eastern and Coast (the areas he was working on), which had inflated results for Kibaki. A few minutes later the military began clearing KICC of civilians and media.

About twenty minutes after that, Kivuitu came on KBC, the government news station, and announced Kibaki as the winner of the election. It took less than an hour for Kibaki to convene about a hundred people at the State House to witness the swearing in ceremony.

About thirty minutes later the news was interrupted by a directive ordering a halt to all live broadcasts. The station was talking to a reporter in Kisumu who was witnessing a large crowd marching toward the police station in the middle of town, where police were waiting in lorries. He was describing the police assault on the crowd as ineffective, due to its size, when he was cutoff by the studio.

Earlier in the broadcast they had cut away from a Raila news conference before it started. I’m sorry I cannot provide more details, but I do not know the names of Kenyan localities well enough to remember all of what was read. Please pass this along to interested parties.

In a follow-up e-mail, he continues:

I should add that the results from many of the disputed 48 constituencies were read on TV before they were announced (inflated to larger numbers) by the ECK.