New Delhi: Kenya's opposition has won the Speaker's post in Parliament on Tuesday.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement supported the 52-year-old lawyer Kenneth Marende, who became the Speaker. Marende got 105 votes while President Mwai Kibaki's candidate got 101 votes.
Tuesday was the first session of Parliament when Kibaki and Odinga came face to face in the same room since Odinga accused Kibaki of rigging the December 27 polls.
Opposition members cheered when Marende was named the winner in the first sitting of the house since Kibaki's disputed election victory.
Meanwhile, Odinga's party is planning to go ahead with three days of protests from Wednesday over Kibaki's re-election.
According to election observers the vote count in the presidential election was flawed.
However, they found no problems with legislative elections that gave Odinga's party 99 Parliament seats to 43 for Kibaki's party. Half the members of Kibaki's Cabinet also lost their seats in the voting.
In the race for the post of deputy speaker, too, Kibaki's candidate lost. Farah Maalim is the new deputy speaker.
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