A fresh battle front between the National Super Alliance and Jubilee Party was opened on Tuesday after the main opposition flag bearer, Raila Odinga, dragged the military into an alleged government plot to rig the August elections.
Mr Odinga claimed the Kenya Defence Forces, National Police Service, regional coordinators and county commanders have been mobilised and are being trained at Nairobi’s Embakasi Barracks to help tilt the elections outcome in favour of the Jubilee Party.
But Deputy President William Ruto quickly hit back at the opposition, accusing Nasa leaders of engaging in “unnecessary noise” over elections to scare Kenyans from turning out on August 8.
MAINTAIN PEACE
The KDF and the police also denied the claims, saying they were in training to prepare to maintain peace and ward off any threats during the elections.
Mr Odinga alleged that there was an ongoing training of KDF, police, county commanders and regional coordinators at the Embakasi Barracks to give them skills on how to influence the elections.
“They (the trainings) have every semblance with what was done at the same venue in the lead up to the 2007 General Election in which APs were later dispersed as election officials and poll agents for the Party of National Unity (then President Mwai Kibaki’s party),” Mr Odinga told journalists at his Capitol Hill offices on Tuesday.
RETAIN POWER
He went on: “A series of meetings of officers from the National Intelligence Service have taken place with the sole purpose of coming up with a plan to help Jubilee retain power at all costs, particularly in the event that the courts maintain that results declared at the constituency level are final.”
The claims rekindle the 2007 presidential race in which Mr Odinga lost to President Kibaki when ODM leaders claimed APs and the military were used to not only “guard President Kibaki’s votes” but also to influence the counting of votes and the elections process in the opposition strongholds.
In his testimony before Justice Phillip Waki commission which investigated the cause of the violence that ensued after the elections, Kisumu Senator Anyang’ Nyongo’ said “there were massive transfers of Police and APs to ODM strongholds and selected people from central Kenya to assist in affecting the vote manipulations and to violently suppress the attendant protests.”
©Daily Monitor
