NAIROBI: Kenyan election officials began counting votes on Tuesday, as results trickled in from a hard-fought contest between the country’s foremost political dynasties and election authorities called for calm.

Shrouded in fears of violence, the vote pits President Uhuru Kenyatta, a wealthy 55-year-old businessman and the son of Kenya’s founding president, against Raila Odinga, 72, a former political prisoner and son of Kenya’s first vice-president.

The rivals are facing each other for the second time; opinion polls put them neck-and-neck. Campaigning was marked by fiery rhetoric but public speeches were largely free of the ethnic hate that has sullied previous contests.

Odinga comes from the Luo people in western Kenya, an area that has long felt neglected by the government and resentful of their perceived exclusion from political power. Kenyatta is Kikuyu, an ethnic group that has supplied three of Kenya’s four presidents since independence from Britain in 1963.

The razor-thin polling has increased the chances of glitches — innocent or otherwise — despite a high-tech electronic voting system. That could be grounds for the loser to allege fraud, as Odinga did in 2007 and in 2013. Given his age, this is probably Odinga’s last crack at the top job.

A decade ago, vote tallying was abruptly stopped and the incumbent president declared the winner, triggering an outcry from Odinga’s camp. The ethnic violence that followed killed 1,200 people and displaced 600,000.

International Criminal Court cases against Kenyatta and his now-deputy, William Ruto, for helping direct that violence collapsed as witnesses died or disappeared.

During the 2013 polls, Odinga again alleged fraud, but quelled unrest by taking his complaints to the court.

This time, the government deployed more than 150,000 security personnel, including wildlife rangers, to protect 41,000 polling stations.

Voting was mostly smooth and turnout was high, the election commission said, despite some isolated incidents and delays. The police said there were no major problems.

In addition to a new president, Kenyans are electing lawmakers and local representatives, the result of a 2010 constitution that devolved power and money to the counties, reducing the “winner takes all” nature of the presidential race that helped unleash previous ethnic violence.

The winner needs one vote more than 50 per cent, and to win at least a quarter of the vote in 24 of Kenya’s 47 counties.

First results began to come in on Tuesday night, with election officials in lime green vests counting votes in the warm glow of gas lamps. But a very close race means it might take three days before a winner emerges. Officially, election authorities have up to a week to declare the outcome.

Kenyatta’s strongholds are in central Kenya and the Rift Valley. Urban centres are up for grabs, although Odinga currently controls Kenya’s three big cities.

Thousands of people returned to their ethnic heartlands ahead of the vote, fearful of a repeat of 2007’s violence.

There are more than 6,000 domestic observers, and party agents at each tallying station have to sign off on results that are then sent electronically to a national collation centre in the capital, Nairobi.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2017