On Dec. 30, 2007, three days after elections were held in Kenya, the Electoral Commission declared President Mwai Kibaki re-elected and he was hurriedly sworn in. The nation quickly plummeted into chaos as the opposition leader, Raila Odinga, and his supporters claimed the election was rigged.
An undercurrent of tribalism ran through the election from the start and heightened the charges. Odinga’s supporters accused Kibaki of favoring his Kikuyu community, which is the largest tribe in Kenya and has dominated politics since the country’s independence from Britain in 1963.
The Red Cross estimated the death toll resulting from weeks of violence at more than 1,000 and said 300,000 people had been displaced.
