January 06, 2008	Sunday	Zilhaj 26, 1428

NAIROBI: Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki is facing growing dissent within his own Kikuyu community over the way the election was conducted and his refusal to accept talks with the opposition under international mediation, it emerged on Jan 4, 2007.

Wealthy Kikuyu business people, who control much of Kenya’s economy, have seen their companies value dive over the past week and are trying to persuade Kibaki to soften his stance. Younger Kikuyu professionals, meanwhile, are accusing the president and his advisers of turning the country against their ethnic group.

Kibaki was awarded a second term on Sunday in a highly contentious election that local and international poll observers describe as not credible. Since then, more than 300 people have died, and thousands of homes, shops and cars have been burnt. Poor Kikuyus living in slums or rural areas have borne the brunt of the violence from supporters of opposition candidate Raila Odinga, losing their lives or livelihoods.

Kikuyus are a mercantilist group and this is the last thing they wanted, said Robert Shaw, an economic analyst in Nairobi. We are seeing massive intransigence and arrogance by the government, but it is false bravado. The pressures on Kibaki from his constituency are immense.

On Friday, the country was returning to an uneasy calm, though 100,000 people remain displaced by violence in the west and face starvation, the UN warned. The Red Cross made an urgent appeal for aid, as the UN World Food Programme sought to get relief supplies to the most needy.

About 100,000 displaced people are threatened with starvation in the Northern Rift valley and need food aid, the UN said.

Many of Nairobi’s wealthiest business people, including Jimnah Mbaru, chairman of the Nairobi stock exchange, openly campaigned for Kibaki, and funded his campaign. But the stock exchange and the Kenya shilling have slid sharply this week. Gitau Githongo, a Kikuyu management consultant in Nairobi, said that the business elite was pressuring Kibaki to rethink his position. Even members of the president’s PNU party were embarrassed by the way the election and its aftermath had been handled, he said.

If you looked at all the evidence before the election, and then the parliamentary results, you knew that Kibaki was going to lose. So I was shocked when he subsequently scraped a win. From the election observation reports, I am clear in my mind that the results were not genuine, and that is the consensus around the country.—Dawn/ The Guardian News Service