Kenya's government has said the fake inauguration of opposition leader Raila Odinga was an "attempt to overthrow" the government. TV stations have been closed amid an investigation into the "swearing-in" ceremony.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/B. Curtis
Advertisement
Kenyan police on Wednesday arrested opposition legislator and lawyer T.J. Kajwang after he attended opposition leader Raila Odinga's fake swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday, opposition official Norman Magaya said.
Kajwang stood next to Odinga on the podium wearing clothes mimicking traditional robes as the opposition leader underwent the symbolic inauguration that was attended by thousands of opposition supporters.
Odinga lost an election re-run in October 2017 to current President Uhuru Kenyatta, who was sworn in two months ago.
The government has outlawed the National Resistance Movement, an upshot of NASA, and labeled it a "criminal group."
Kenya's top three TV stations have been closed down indefinitely as the government investigates the fake inauguration.
In a statement, the government called the fake swearing-in ceremony a "well-choreographed attempt to subvert or overthrow the legally constituted government."
It also said it had commenced full investigations around the supposed inauguration of Odinga and that "appropriate legal action” would be taken
The investigation "will extend to co-conspirators and facilitators."
How events unfolded in the Kenyan election
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has begun his second term in office. Here's how the tumultuous events developed since the election campaign in August.
Image: Reuters/B. Ratner
A tight race
Elections on August 8, 2017 were expected to be a neck- and-neck affair between incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta and his rival Raila Odinga.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Delay
Unrest ahead
A week ahead of the hotly contested vote, Christopher Musando, IT department chief of Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), was found dead. He was one of the few people with key information about the election management system. IEBC servers were supposedly breached in the 2013 polls.
Image: picture-alliance/AP
Marred by violence
The violence many Kenyans had feared and anticipated erupted just a few hours after the election results, handing victory to the incumbent, started to trickle in. Dozens of people were killed, mostly in the opposition strongholds. Refusing to accept the outcome of the poll, Raila Odinga turned to the Supreme Court.
Image: Reuters/G. Tomasevic
Anticipating results
The election was free and fair, international observers said, despite opposition allegations of rigging and hacked servers. Former US Secretary of State John Kerry, who headed a group of election observers from the Carter Center, also endorsed the vote.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/T. Karumba
Irregular, illegal
To no avail, however as on September 1, Kenya’s Supreme Court declared the vote neither "transparent nor verifiable" and nullified the August 8 presidential elections, in which the IEBC had declared President Uhuru Kenyatta the winner with more than 54 percent of vote. The court called for new elections within 60 days.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/B. curtis
Kenyatta - livid, stung
A disappointed Uhuru Kenyatta, who had already received hundreds of congratulatory messages, called the Supreme Court judges 'crooks.' The Chief Justice emerged an African hero for taking a firm decision to annul the results that were in favor of the incumbent president.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Kenya TV
In the interest of a 'credible' vote
Kenyatta's rival Raila Odinga pulled out of the re-run of the presidential election scheduled for late October. Odinga said he wanted to allow for the electoral commission to make fundamental reforms that would deliver a "credible election."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/D. Bandic
Business boycott
The opposition boycott targeted giants in the telecommunications industry and companies that deal in dairy products, cooking fats and oils. Raila Odinga took the lead, publicly migrating from the Safaricom phone network, whose client he had been for the last ten years, to a new provider called airtel.
Image: Reuters/B. Ratner
Challenge dismissed
In November, Kenya’s Supreme Court upheld President Kenyatta's victory in the controversial October re-run, which he had won with 98 percent of the vote on a turnout of 39 percent. The court dismissed two petitions that argued the second poll had not been conducted according to law.
Image: Reuters/B. Ratner
Two titans
Kenya, where politics have been characterized by ethnic tensions since independence in 1963, is deeply split along an ethnic divide that has triggered a debate on splitting the country into two. It’s now up to the two political heavyweights, Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, (flanked above by the Archbishop of Canterbury) to bring the country back to normalcy.
Image: Reuters/B. Ratner
10 images1 | 10
Opposition co-leader's home attacked
One of Odinga's co-leaders of the opposition National Super Alliance coalition (NASA), Kalonzo Musyoka, who was to be sworn in as his deputy, failed to show up at the event because his bodyguards had been withdrawn.
A few hours after the ceremony on Wednesday, Musyoka said his home had been attacked in the early hours of the morning, with shots and a stun grenade fired at his house. Police are investigating.
'Assault on freedom of expression'
In a statement, the government said the channels that had been shut down had ignored a government briefing before the inauguration event and tried to broadcast it live.
The statement said live broadcasting would have provoked violence and "would have led to thousands of deaths of innocent Kenyans."
The shutdown of TV and radio stations prompted the Media Council of Kenya to release a statement that said it was "shocked at the recent turn of events."
Thousands of opposition supporters attend opposition leader Raila Odinga's fake inauguration in Uhuru Park in NairobiImage: Reuters/B. Ratner
"A political contest has turned into the greatest threat and assault on freedom of expression and media in Kenya's recent history," it said.
International rights groups also criticized the move. "Kenyan authorities have restricted media coverage at a critical moment, and violated the public's right to information about important events," said Otsieno Namwaya, an Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Why hold a fake swearing-in ceremony? Odinga believes that he is the rightful leader and Kenyatta is illegitimate. An election on August 8, 2017, was won by Kenyatta with 54 percent of the vote and then annulled by the Supreme Court, which ordered a re-run on October 26. Odinga boycotted the second vote and Kenyatta won with 98 percent.
