Malik Obama, president Barack Obama’s older half-brother, announced he will run for governor in the Kenyan county of Siaya, Bloomberg reports.

The elder Obama announced his candidacy as an independent in a rally on Sunday.

“Siaya county is facing a lot of problems from poor infrastructure to poverty due to bad leadership,” Obama said, according to Bloomberg. “I will change this if elected.”

Kenyans will head to the polls on March 4 to elect a new president and parliament as well as regional representatives, France 24 explains.

Kenya is hoping to avoid a repeat of deadly post-election violence that broke out after a national vote in 2007. Fighting over the 2007 election results left hundreds of people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands across the country.

Violence related to the upcoming election has already erupted this year, however. Abbas Gullet, the head of the Kenya Red Cross, warned that by August 2012 at least 200 people had already died in pre-vote violence. 
“It’s about governorship, it’s about senator-ship, it’s about members of parliament, and women representative, and boundaries of communities that have co-existed for centuries,” he told the Associated Press. Gullet added that two out of the four Kenyan elections since 1992 have been marred by violence.

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