Odinga vows not to back down over ‘stolen’ vote
NAIROBI: Kenya’s opposition leader Raila Odinga vowed Sunday not to back down over an election he claims was stolen from him and urged his supporters to boycott work while he mulls his next move.
The 72-year- old emerged for the first time since his election defeat on Friday night, urging massive crowds in Nairobi’s Kibera and Mathare slums to stay away from work Monday and steer clear of police after 16 people were killed in protests.
“We had predicted they will steal the election and that’s what happened. We are not done yet. We will not give up. Wait for the next course of action which I will announce the day after tomorrow ( Tuesday),” he told a heaving crowd of supporters in the capital’s largest slum, Kibera.
While deadly protests that broke out Friday night after President Uhuru Kenyatta was re- elected appeared to have fizzled Sunday, AFP photographers witnessed a violent clash between rival supporters in which two men were badly beaten.
Just hours after Odinga’s visit to another slum, Mathare, supporters from his Luo ethnic group torched businesses belonging to members of Kenyatta’s Kikuyu who they accused of attacking one of their own.
An AFP photographer saw the Luo man lying on the ground, with blood seeping from his head.
Several hundred people then gathered on either side, armed with sticks, bows and arrows. Clashes followed in which a Kikuyu man was beaten, his head smashed in with sticks and a rock, according to a second AFP photographer.
Calm later returned to the area, AFP journalists said.
We had predicted they will steal the election and that’s what happened. We are not done yet. We will not give up. Wait for the next course of action which I will announce the day after tomorrow (Tuesday).
Politics in Kenya is largely divided along tribal lines, and the winner- takes- all nature of elections has long stoked communal divisions.
Three of Kenya’s four presidents have been Kikuyu and the other Kalenjin, leaving Luos and other major ethnic groups feeling excluded from power and marginalised for over half a century.
In 2007 Odinga and his allies claimed an election was stolen by Mwai Kibaki — a Kikuyu. Foreign observers agreed there had been irregularities.
Political grievances — over land and access to power linked to old ethnic fault lines — burst into the open, leading to two months of violence which left 1,100 people dead and 600,000 displaced.
“The reason elections have become a trigger for violence is the relationship between power and prosperity. It is a zerosum game and winning becomes a life and death matter, hence losing is not an option,” the Daily Nation wrote in its editorial.
Odinga, who scored nearly 45 per cent of votes, has a huge following notably among the poor who are drawn to his platform of more equitable economic growth.
Odinga’s National Super Alliance ( Nasa) coalition has insisted he was robbed of victory through hacking and manipulation of an electronic vote tallying system.
Local election observer group ELOG, which deployed 8,300 observers and conducted a parallel tallying operation, determined Kenyatta had won with 54 per cent — the same figure given by the electoral commission. — AFP
Raila Odinga, Kenyan opposition leader