Odinga warned off ‘act of high treason’

Swearing in an alternative president of Kenya would be an act of treason, the country’s attorney-general said on Thursday.

Swearing in an alternative president of Kenya would be an act of treason, the country’s attorneygeneral said on Thursday, days before an opposition leader expects to be inaugurated by an unofficial people’s assembly.

Such an inauguration would worsen the rifts opened by an acrimonious election season, when more than 70 people died in political violence.

The extended campaigns eventually led to President Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election.

Attorney-general Githu Muigai did not name anyone, but opposition leader Raila Odinga said in November that he would be inaugurated by a people’s assembly on December 12 — Kenya’s Independence Day.

Unless a candidate was declared the victor in an election by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission and the swearing-in was conducted by the Kenyan chief justice, Muigai said, such an inauguration “is a process wholly unanticipated by the constitution and is null and void”.

“The criminal law of the Republic of Kenya stipulates that sort of process is high treason,” he said.

“It is high treason of the persons involved, and any other person facilitating that process.” Under Kenyan law, treason is punishable by death.

The attorney-general said people’s assemblies proposed by the National Super Alliance, Odinga’s opposition coalition, were illegal as well. “These institutions are unconstitutional they are illegal, they are null and void. The persons involved in their creation are involved in extraconstitutional activity and may be visited by the full force of the law,” Muigai said.

So far, 12 Kenyan counties have passed motions supporting the formation of a people’s assembly, most counties that had backed the opposition in Kenya’s protracted voting.

Odinga and Kenyatta faced off in an election in August that Kenyatta won. But the Supreme Court nullified the result, and a repeat election was held on October 26. Odinga boycotted that vote, saying reforms needed to avoid “illegalities and irregularities” had not been made. Kenyatta won again, with 98% of the vote.

The US had urged opposition leaders to work within the law and avoid actions like the proposed “inauguration ceremony”, a statement from the US Embassy in Nairobi said on Wednesday, following a visit to Kenya by Donald Yamamoto, the acting assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

Without directly mentioning the ceremony or the US, Odinga said on Thursday that Kenyans should be left to solve their own problems.

“Our friends can give us advice … in privacy. Don’t come and shout at us and tell us that we are going to violate the constitution. Which constitution, my foot,” Odinga told reporters in Nairobi.

THESE INSTITUTIONS ARE NOT CONSTITUTIONAL THEY ARE ILLEGAL, THEY ARE NULL AND VOID