Kenyan opposition leader withdraws from repeat presidential poll
NAIROBI, (Reuters) - Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga withdrew yesterday from a court-ordered re-run of the presidential election due on Oct. 26, saying the vote would not be free or fair and leaving President Uhuru Kenyatta as the only candidate.
Kenyatta said the election would proceed as planned, promising to get more votes than he did in August and saying his party had no time for “empty rhetoric and divisive politics”.
The election board said on Twitter it was meeting and would communicate the way forward.
But the announcements could further prolong nearly three months of political uncertainty that has worried citizens and blunted growth in Kenya, East Africa’s biggest economy and a staunch Western ally in a region roiled by conflict.
An ally of Odinga called for nationwide protests from Wednesday, raising the prospect of more clashes between police and demonstrators.
For now though there was little sign that the demonstrations could boil over into ethnic clashes. Protests and ethnic violence killed 1,200 people after a disputed 2007 election.
In his announcement, Odinga repeated previous criticism of the election board, called the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), for not replacing some officials, who he blamed for irregularities in the Aug. 8 poll.
On Sept. 1, the Supreme Court nullified incumbent Kenyatta’s win due to procedural irregularities and ordered a new election between Kenyatta against Odinga to be held within 60 days.
“There is no intention on the part of the IEBC to undertake any changes to its operations and parts of the personnel to ensure that the illegalities and irregularities that led to the invalidation of 8th of August do not happen again,” Odinga told a news conference in the capital of Nairobi.
“Indications are that elections scheduled for the 26th of October will be worse than the previous one,” he said. “In the interest of the people of Kenya, the region and world at large, we believe that all will be best served by (opposition alliance) NASA vacating the presidential candidature of elections.”
Since the Supreme Court ruling, police have repeatedly used teargas to disperse small protests by the opposition demanding the election board change some officials.
Senator James Orengo, a key Odinga ally, called for countrywide protests after Odinga spoke. “Tomorrow all over the country there are going to be demonstrations the basis will be no reforms, no elections,” Orengo said.
Kenyatta told a political rally the election would proceed as planned and he was sure he would win again, citing the majority that his party won in both houses of parliament and among the country’s 47 governors.
“We have no problem going back to elections. We are sure we will get more votes than the last time,” Kenyatta said in the southern town of Voi, speaking in Kiswahili in a speech carried on local television.
Among a series of comments later on Twitter, he said: “We don’t have time for empty rhetoric and divisive politics. Our agenda is to fulfil our promises to the Kenyan people.”
Murithi Mutiga, a senior Horn of Africa analyst for the global thinktank International Crisis Group, said