NAIROBI - Kenya's opposition challenger Raila Odinga pulled ahead of President Mwai Kibaki on Friday in the race to lead east Africa's biggest economic power, according to early election tallies by local media.
Partial results collated by three television channels all gave Odinga, an entrepreneur and son of a nationalist hero, a big lead, though a separate exit poll put Kibaki ahead in what many had forecast would be Kenya's closest election.
If Odinga won, Kibaki would be the first of Kenya's three post-independence presidents to be ousted by the ballot box.
Scenting victory, the opposition complained that lengthy delays announcing the official results of Thursday's voting were causing anxiety.
"We are very confident that we are winning," said Joseph Nyagah, an official in Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement.
"The only area of concern is that they are refusing to announce the results," he said. "They could cook them up ... Is this a strategy to impose a rejected regime on the people?"
He accused the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) of deliberately holding back results from the key Central Province "pending instructions from senior government officials".
The ECK denied any interference but lamented the delays, which it said could extend the process into Saturday.
"If results were announced on the media two hours ago, the returning officer has no excuse for not getting them to us," ECK Commissioner Jack Tumwa said.
"We want them now .... the country is getting restless."
Diplomats say the poll was only the second truly democratic one in a country that votes largely on ethnic and geographic lines and spent 39 years under single-party rule until Kibaki's landslide victory in 2002.
By 3 p.m. (12:00 p.m. British time), the ECK had announced results for just 12 out of 210 constituencies, showing Kibaki leading Odinga with 379,981 votes to 109,700.
