Man killed with arrows in Kenyan village on edge over elections
KOGUTA/ KISUMU, Kenya: The body of an elderly man was discovered in a sugarcane field near a village in western Kenya yesterday, the day after high-level officials visited the area in an attempt to calm ethnic tensions inflamed by the repeat presidential election.
The body of the 60-year- old man had three arrows in its back and severe head wounds, a Reuters witness in the village of Koguta said.
The motive and perpetrators for the killing were unclear, but it came a day after villagers from the Luo and Kalenjin communities armed themselves against each other. Locals warned the death of the Luo man could spark tit-for-tat violence.
“There’s a desire for revenge by the Luo community, I’m trying to tell them to stay calm, but they are so bitter and angry,” Gordon Onyango, 32, a Luo, said.
The Luo community largely boycotted this Thursday’s presidential election, which was supposed to again pit opposition leader Raila Odinga, a Luo, against President Uhuru Kenyatta, a Kikuyu with a Kalenjin deputy president.
The Supreme Court ordered the repeat poll after it nullified Kenyatta’s win in an August election grounds.
But Odinga withdrew from the re-rerun, saying it would not be fair. In his strongholds in the west, an area that has long felt excluded from political and economic power, protesters prevented polling stations from opening in four counties.
Across Kenya, about 10 per cent of polling stations were unable to open, although there were no problems in Kenyatta’s areas. Turnout plummeted from 80 per cent in August to about 35 per cent, undercutting Kenyata’s hopes for a decisive mandate for a second term. — Reuters on procedural