NAIROBI, Dec 29: Opposition leader Raila Odinga’s lead over incumbent Mwai Kibaki in Kenya’s presidential ballot has been slashed to less than 40,000 votes, the electoral commission said on Saturday.

Odinga had mustered 3,880,053 votes by 2:30pm (1130 GMT) while Kibaki had garnered 3,842,051, electoral commission chairman Samuel Kivuitu told a press conference.

Kivuitu did not specify how many constituencies were included in the tally or how many were still to be counted, but the provisional results showed that a 300,000-vote lead Odinga enjoyed earlier in the day had melted away.

The press conference quickly deteriorated into a shouting match between party agents with Odinga officials accusing Kibaki’s camp of rigging the results.

Unusual delays in the vote tallying process have raised suspicions of rigging in Odinga’s camp and sparked riots in Nairobi slums as well as other towns and cities across the country.

Odinga held the edge over Kibaki in nearly all pre-election opinion polls and enjoyed a clear lead in the early counting following Thursday’s presidential vote.

Polling day was described by several international observer teams, notably from the United States and the European Union, as relatively orderly and generally positive.—AFP