Kenya’s opposition chief Odinga takes oath as ‘People’s President’

Kenya’s opposition leader Raila Odinga who boycotted the October 26 repeat poll has taken oath as ‘People’s President’ at a ceremony attended by thousands of supporters at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park.

The swearing in which the opposition party variously postponed since December 12 last year took barely five minutes presided over by Odinga’s political allies but the coalition’s three other principals were conspicuously missing.

“I, Raila Omolo Odinga, do swear that I will protect the nation as people’s president, so help me God,” said Odinga amidst of thousands of supporters.

Odinga told his supporters that they would later know what happened with the other three principals after they failed to attend the ceremony. The principals are Odinga’s running mate in the August poll Kalonzo Musyoka, Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetangula. He said Musyoka would be sworn in later.

The event went on as the three major television stations were shut down by the government mid morning a day after the country’s Editor’s Guild protested what it termed as intimidation from President Uhuru Kenyatta threatening to withdraw licenses from the TV stations if they aired today’s proceedings.

The opposition coalition NASA released figures Thursday allegedly showing Odinga won the August 8, 2017 presidential poll with 8.1 million votes against Kenyatta’s 7.9 million. The electoral body IEBC has since dismissed the figures as inaccurate. NASA said the figures were from the IEBC’s servers.