Kenya: Uhuru and Ruto sowing seeds of discord

by SAMUEL OMWENGA

The virulent speeches and chest thumping by two of Kenya’s presidential aspirants, both suspected of committing crimes against humanity, is extremely worrying. The government needs to act quickly and firmly and the people should reject these politicians.

Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and MP for Eldoret North William Ruto organized what was billed as a ‘peace/prayer rally’ on Friday, January 27, 2012 at the 64 Stadium in Eldoret.

But the event was anything but a peace and prayer rally.

In fact, it was quite the opposite and can easily be classifiable as nothing but a rally designed to incite and extol racial hatred and animosity in contravention of not only our constitution, but the International Criminal Court conditions under which they and another two Kenyans are walking free instead of being in cells awaiting trial at The Hague.

According to a source privy to the planning of this event, the public rally was attended by over 45 legislators including Kenya’s Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, former MPs and presidential aspirant Raphael Tuju and another ICC suspect, Joshua arap Sang.

The same source indicates the number of current and former MPs invited was more than the number of those who actually showed up. According to another source present at the meeting, prayers took exactly 11 minutes and immediately thereafter, the rally quickly morphed into a full-fledged political rally with all the speakers making statements laced with hate speech and/or incitement.

Speaker after speaker took the mike to yelp what was clearly a well-rehearsed script, with nearly all the speakers stating that should Uhuru and Ruto (Ocampo-2) be barred from vying for the presidency, then Kenya will not have elections.

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