Raila Odinga on one of his campaign rallies.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga said he would take his claims
that kenya’s presidential election was rigged to the supreme court,after
previously refusing to do so,and vowed to protest peacefully.
‘’we have now decided to move to the supreme court and lay
before the world the making of a computer generated leadership,’’the 72 year
old leader of the National Super Alliance(NASA) coalition told journalists.
He also called for peaceful forms of protest against the
victory of his opponent President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Odinga recalled that the rights to demonstrate,strike and
carry out acts of civil disobedience were enshrined in the constitution.
‘’We will preach peace ,we will uphold our rights to
assemble and protest.We shall hold vigils,moments of silence,beat drums and do
everything else to peacefully draw attention to the gross electoral justice and demand
redress,’’he said.
Days of sometimes violent street protests,crushed by
police,have left at least 17 people dead among them two children since the
declaration of kenyatta’s victory.
The blood shed has spurred traumatic memories of the clashes
that followed the country’s presidential vote in 2007,when a wave of
politically-motivated tribal violence left
1,100 dead.
Odinga called for peaceful demonstrations against the ‘’the
death of democracy.’’
‘’kenyans have no need to use violence to achieve
justice,’’he said.
‘’This country
is now divided between those prepared to live under autocracy and the forces of
freedom and democracy.’’
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| Raila addressing his supporters. |
Odinga has
charged that the August 8 election was rigged in favour of Kenyatta through the
hacking and manipulation of the electronic vote counting system,claims he
repeated.
He accused the
election commission of illegally releasing unverified results to create the
expectation of an Uhuru Kenyatta victory’’ and claimed that the results had
been hacked because an algorithm had been introduced to rig the out come,an
allegation he will have to prove in court.
Odinga,who had
previously ruled out a court appeal,said he was only going to the judges after
civil society groups and among them was the Kenya Human Rights Commission(KHRC)
and the Africa Centre for Governance(AfriCOG) were threatened with closure by
government.
He said NASA was
taking its appeal to the courts despite consistent ruling a series of
pre-election petitions.
