ODM-Scandinavia Statement On Rigged Elections

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 03:36:05 +0100

Since voting ended on Thursday 27th December, the Kenya Electoral Commission (ECK) has failed to announce results for the winning Presidential candidate sparking riots in Eldoret, Kisumu, Nairobi and other parts of the country. During the delay, the Presidential vote has been rigged through machinations by Neo colonial home guards surrounding Kibaki.

In the words of Samwuel Kivuitu, the Electoral Commissioner, returning officers from numerous polling stations "cannot be traced" because their phones were dead. Kenyan TV stations have broadcast shocking scenes featuring illegal ballot boxes and bogus Presidential ballot papers being intercepted at polling stations. In Kamukunji, the rigging was so intensive that the Electoral commissioner has cancelled the results and ordered new elections.

The rigging was so obvious that ODM members had to physically stop Commissioner Kivuitu from continuing with announcements because votes that were being announced were not tallying with what ODM agents had signed against at polling stations. Chaos reigned supreme at KICC where the announcements were being made forcing a bunch of General Service Unit (GSU) personnel to be mobilized into the hall. Votes from Nithi, Tigania West, South Imenti, Kiambaa and numerous polling stations do not tally with results recorded by ODM agents and the rigging tactic appears to have been manipulation of records by thieves working for Kibaki.

ODM's intervention (which halted the announcements) forced the Electoral Commissioner to accept that Presidential candidates send two representatives to verify results in disputed stations in the 210 Constituencies before the final announcement can be made. This background is very disturbing in view of the serious consequences of a rigged Presidential vote in Kenya.

While Kibaki has clearly been voted out of office on an "ODM Platform of change", the election represented a struggle between corrupt pre-colonial home guards on the one hand and national democratic forces seeking to advance the anti-colonial struggle in Kenya on the other. Geezers like Moody Awori, former Vice president and Njenga Karume were voted out.

The rigging of the vote to prevent President elect Raila Amollo Odinga from taking over power is based on the fear by the home guards that Raila will re-open cases of mega corruption scandals (like Anglo-Leasing) that have plagued the Kibaki government since the Septuagenarian dictator was voted in Office in 2002 following the popular defeat of former murderer Daniel arap Moi who ran down the country for 24 years.

The home guards surrounding Kibaki suffer from serious ethnic chauvinism while they adhere to an old fashioned and equally ethnic based belief that "a non Kikuyu can never lead Kenya". They have mismanaged and ruined the country using a callous agenda of tribalism, nepotism, cronyism and corruption that Raila's Presidency has promised to wipe out and put the country on the road to progress.

KENYA MUST BE FREE BY THE BALLOT OR THE BULLET

Because of the enormous wealth they have stolen while playing dirty politics of hatred and hostility towards other ethnic groups, the home guards are trembling because their worst nightmare has come true – Raila has been elected President of Kenya in a popular and historic election that promises to open a new era of change and transformation. The home guards are shaking because of the thousands of murders they have perpetrated against Kenyan people, murders that they fear, will be addressed by Raila through the establishment of investigative bodies seeking justice to the victims of human rights violations and families whose loved ones have been murdered by Kibaki regime.

Instead of accepting defeat and facing the consequences of theft and years of ineptitude, the home guards are trying to cling on to power through crude-style vote rigging in the hope that this will postpone their day of reckoning.

In the process of implementing this mucky scheme, the Kibaki loyalists are exposing ordinary Kikuyu workers, businessmen and youth to unwarranted physical attacks from ODM supporters, some of whom translate the rigged elections by the home guards as an overall "Kikuyu conspiracy" against the Kenyan people. ODM Scandinavia believes that the millions of poor and deprived Kikuyus who supported Kibaki are victims of "ethnic brainwashing" by home guards using them as pawns in a political chess game.

As part of a crude rigging lay out, the strategy of the home guards is to bank on the State's instruments of violence to contain an inevitable "mass insurrection" against Kibaki or a general uprising by Kenyans who have stated that Kenya "will go to war" if Kibaki does not concede defeat and hand over power to President elect Raila Amollo Odinga. Bringing about change in Kenya through the ballot has been accomplished by Kenyans after years of struggle and if Kibaki undermines this step through rigging, the next option might as well be the bullet (Mtutu).

The sporadic violence that has now erupted across the country is seen by ODM Scandinavia as "an introduction" of things to come if Kibaki steals the vote. ODM-Scandinavia believes that the violence should be directed at agents of election rigging and not ordinary Kikuyus who have nothing to do with Kibaki's rigging machine. While Kikuyus who voted for Kibaki were exercising their democratic right to vote for a candidate of their choice, the rigging of the vote is a punishable and criminal act which should not be accepted by anybody who believes in democracy.

The thinking of the home guards is that it is better to plunge the country into chaos than hand over power to President elect Raila Odinga, a big miscalculation which, ODM Scandinavia believes, will come back to haunt the perpetrators whom, we believe, should be arrested, chained and caged to face justice for crimes against the Kenyan voters.

The position of ODM-Scandinavia is that Raila Amollo Oding is the popular and democratically elected fourth President of the Republic of Kenya and the Party branch will not accept rigged results under any circumstance.

While sections of the foreign election monitoring units have appealed for calm and tranquillity, we believe that ODM supporters should do everything within their means to defend the ODM victory in the historic December 27th elections. We sympathize with foreign observers who have made appeals to Kenyans "to shun violence" because the ballot is part of the peaceful democratic process and once this process is abused through open rigging of elections, bloody violence becomes inevitable as a way of seeking redress.

Kibaki could send the riot police and GSU in the streets to crush popular resistance to rigging but these forces will never be able to defeat a determined people who have voted out a senile and corrupt dictator now seeking to plunge the country into chaos as a tactic of political survival.

Apartheid was defeated through violence. The Palestinian struggle has been recognized because of the element of violence in their struggle. If Kibaki rigs elections, ODM-Scandinavia believes that the use of violence as a method of struggle will become legitimate because Kenya must be free by the ballot or the bullet.

With 95 ODM-MPs and a hostile electorate which has just weeded out a rotten bunch of corrupt home guards, and with a determined Kenyan people seeking to defend an election from being stolen under their very noses through the so called Electoral Commission, we wish to state that Kibaki will not be able to govern Kenya and this is the message ODM-Scandinavia wishes to send to the defeated Kibaki and old guard criminals duping him that rigging election will succeed. Our intelligence indicates that it will not work!

Martin Ngatia
Vice chairperson
ODM-Scandinavia

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