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Amid promises of change, Kenya goes to the polls

ITEN, (KENYA), DEC.26. The Kenyans will vote on Friday in the elections that will end the 24-year rule of the President, Daniel Arap Moi, and herald, what many hope, a more prosperous era for the East African nation plagued by corruption and an ailing economy.

The contest to succeed Mr. Moi pits the ruling party's Uhuru Kenyatta against Mwai Kibaki, leader of an alliance of Opposition parties that have united like never before.

The contrast between the two front-runners in the Presidential race is huge.

Mr. Kenyatta is Moi's hand-picked choice and the son of Kenya's first President — Jomo Kenyatta — but at 41 and with just a year in Government, he is a political novice.

Mr. Kibaki is a 71-year-old political veteran who was Mr. Moi's Vice-President from 1978 to 1988.

He has been a leading Opposition figure since multiparty politics were reintroduced in 1991, and came second to Mr. Moi in 1997 elections in which the Opposition was divided along tribal lines.

But both Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Kenyatta claim to represent change. Mr. Kenyatta argued that he represented a new generation of leaders, while Mr. Kibaki said his Opposition alliance, the National Rainbow Coalition, or NARC, could right the wrongs of the past 39 years of Government under the Kenya African National Union party, known as KANU.

Both the candidates, members of Kenya's largest tribe, the Kikuyu, had one thing in common, ending rampant corruption and turning around the economy — East Africa's largest and most important — would be their priorities.

Mr. Moi, who became President in 1978 after Jomo Kenyatta's death, is constitutionally obliged to step down at the end of his current term, but he will remain as chairman of the KANU, which has run the country since independence from Britain in 1963.

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