Kenya opposition leader rejects to share power

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenya’s opposition leader Raila Odinga said Sunday he will not share power, speaking days after the Supreme Court’s decision to annul President Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election and order a fresh presidential election in sixty days.

Odinga, speaking at a church service in Nairobi Sunday, said his party cannot accept to share power with “thieves.”

President Uhuru Kenyatta similarly ruled out sharing power when addressing elected members of county assemblies from his Jubilee Party on Saturday.

Odinga, 72, was named Prime Minister and Kenyatta his deputy in a coalition government in two thousand eight February following the disputed presidential election of Dec 27, 2007. More than 1,000 people died and 600,000 were evicted from their homes in post-election violence that erupted from that election.

The Supreme Court nullified Kenyatta’s win announced by the electoral commission on Aug 11. The court voted 4-2 to nullify Kenyatta’s election telling they found the electoral commission had performed irregularities and illegalities in adding up the presidential vote.

Odinga said the electoral commission as presently constituted should not be permitted to conduct the fresh election telling it was complicit in electoral fraud.

Kenyatta, however, has said the electoral commission should not be interfered with and warned the court against taking act on the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. Since the Supreme Court ruling Kenyatta has said Chief Justice David Magara and the judiciary are “crooks” and alleged they are on the payroll of donors. Kenyatta said he will fix the judiciary once he wins the coming elections because it ruled against him.

The stir to nullify Kenya’s election was unprecedented on the African continent. It gave fresh hope to opposition leader Odinga, who had alleged the electronic results of the Aug. Eight balloting were manipulated. He had lost by about 1.Four million votes out of harshly fifteen million ballots cast.

Odinga, a longtime opposition candidate and the son of Kenya’s very first vice president, had unsuccessfully challenged the results of the two thousand thirteen vote that Kenyatta won. This time Odinga’s supporters at very first had said they would not go to court but filed a petition two weeks ago.

Kenya had been braced for protests before the ruling, with police deployed to sensitive areas of the capital, Nairobi, and streets near the court were barricaded. Human rights groups have said that police killed at least twenty four people in unrest after the election.

Kenyatta, 55, the son of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s very first president, is attempting to avoid becoming the very first Kenyan president not to win re-election.

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