Opposition supporters raise machetes and sticks next to a poster of opposition leader Raila Odinga during riots in the Mathare slum in Nairobi, Kenya. A massive rally to protest last week's presidential election is scheduled for today.

Nairobi, Kenya ? The opposition party pressed ahead Wednesday with plans to hold a banned “million-man march” today in Kenya’s capital to protest a disputed presidential election, raising fears of a new surge of violence.

Truckloads of paramilitary police arrived late Wednesday to blockade Nairobi’s Uhuru Park, the site of the planned rally.

Opposition protesters, mainly from the Luo tribe, have unleashed days of fierce tribal violence against members of the dominant Kikuyu tribe, which supported President Mwai Kibaki in last week’s elections. Tribal fighting with machetes, rocks and clubs has broken out in Kenya’s slums and other areas.

The march comes amid intense international pressure on Kibaki, who was declared the winner of the election and sworn in to a new five-year term Sunday, and rival Raila Odinga to reach a political accommodation.

With the post-election death toll edging toward 300, the international community has called on both sides to restrain their supporters. Today’s rally could lead to pitched battles between police and opposition supporters from the Kibera slum area if protesters try to break through police lines to get to Uhuru Park.

With elections due this year in Ghana, Zimbabwe and Angola, the message Kibaki’s administration sends to other African countries about democracy is seen as crucial. John Kufuor, Ghana’s president and the chairman of the African Union, was to arrive in Nairobi today to meet Kibaki and Odinga.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary David Milibrand issued a statement Wednesday calling for restraint and intense political dialogue.

But Kibaki and Odinga remain stalemated: Kibaki insists the election was fair and demands that Odinga accept the results; Odinga demands that Kibaki admits he is not the legitimate president or at least accepts international mediation.

Both have refused to discuss a power-sharing deal, seen by the international community as the only speedy way to avoid more deaths and a slide into more entrenched tribal killing.

Interviewed by the British Broadcasting Corp., Odinga was blunt on why he would not call off the rally, despite the violence and chaos of recent days: “I refuse to be asked to give the Kenyan people an anesthetic so they can be raped.”