Kenya ? Kenya’s president threatened a tough crackdown Monday as rioters rampaged for a third day to protest what they called his sham re-election – a bloody convulsion threatening what has been East Africa’s most stable and prosperous democracy.

At least 135 Kenyans were reported killed in violence that flared from the shantytowns of Nairobi to resort towns on the sweltering Indian Ocean coast. Opposition leaders set the stage for more turmoil by calling for a million people to rally against President Mwai Kibaki.

In the slums of Nairobi, rioters waved machetes and shouted “Kibaki must go!”, while police beat protesters with clubs, fired off tear gas and shot bullets into the air. Much of the country was at a standstill, with shops closed and many people hunkered inside their homes.

“We are ready to die and we’re ready for serious killings,” 24-year-old James Onyango, who lives in Nairobi’s Kibera slum, told The Associated Press as homes and shops around him burned.

The opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, dropped his plan for a mass protest rally Monday after a warning from police. But he called for 1 million people to march Thursday on the capital’s Uhuru Park, where protesters seeking multiparty democracy massed in the early 1990s.