RAILA ODINGA and ODM HYPOCRISY DEMYSTIFIED

It is indeed deplorable for Raila Odinga and some of the ODM politicians to selectively make noise about flaws in the tallying of votes in the just concluded presidential and general elections in Kenya.

Raila and ODM have exhibited some level of hypocrisy that has rocked the country as a whole into unnecessary violence, which has now turned into full blown genocide. From October 2007 all the way to the Dec 28, 2007, pundits consistently projected” a close to call ” presidential election. Steadman Poll had indicated that majority of Kenyans would vote on ethnic alignments, a prophecy fulfilled on Dec 27, 2007. The Gall Up poll had projected that Kibaki would win by 1%.

The Steadman poll indicated that Raila would win marginally as well. We all know that polls do not mean much. We all saw what happened this month in New Hampshire with Obama and Clinton contest. The media had written off Hillary Clinton, just to see her rebound.

Now, our issue is with Raila and ODM selective noise making. Raila and ODM would want the Kenyans and the international communities believe that they got genuine votes from their constituents.

According to the analysis and reporting by the Daily Nation Newspaper; votes from the following constituencies should have been eliminated from the final tally of presidential elections along with the votes from the three constituencies that were declared null and void by ECK.

Justice would require that these votes be eliminated in total. If eliminated, this would give Kibaki over a million vote victory over Raila. Please do the maths and ask Raila to respect the verdict of genuine votes.

Please note that the highest recorded voter turn out in any constituency in central and eastern province was 90%.

Some votes from Central Province were declared null and void and did not make it to the final tally. The same treatment should have been given to votes from other constituencies that exhibited massive flaws and broad day light rigging by ODM operatives.

Look at votes from Eldoret North;- William Ruto election should have been nullified upfront. There is no rocket science there. Instead, William Ruto in chest thumping posture has engineered ethnic cleansing to eliminate certain people from Rift Valley, simply put genocide through his surrogates the Karamojong Guerrilla Fighters (KGF).

This double talk by Raila and ODM does not serve our country well. On December 28, 2007 doctored vote counts from ODM stronghold had been counted and announced by the ECK. The early submission of doctored vote numbers from ODM strongholds gave Raila Odinga a fictitious lead in presidential vote tallying.

The RAILA initial fictitious lead was wiped out when votes from Central Kenya started tickling in at a chameleon speed. It is important to note that according to Raila and ODM there were “no irregularities” in the vote tallying while Raila Odinga was the front runner. We remember William Ruto complaining that votes from Central and Eastern were taking too long to come in. Hell broke loose when ODM discovered that their votes had all been counted and over 50% of central and Eastern provinces votes had yet to be counted and submitted to ECK.

It was at this point that ODM started demanding that the results be announced. What a selfish way of looking at issues.

We do not want to labor more in analyzing the flaws in the just ended general election. “Two wrongs do not make a right”. Elections will come and go. Life has to go on. Live is sacred. We cannot afford to lose a single Kenyan. The outcome of the general election is ugly. The nation is divided in the middle.

We have to put the elections aside and embark on a healing process that can return our cherished country to normalcy. The people that voted for Raila are Kenyans, the people that voted for Kibaki are Kenyans, and the people that voted for Kalonzo are Kenyans. The government will serve all Kenyans without discrimination. Greed should never be allowed to thrive in our maturing democracy.

The President might call fresh elections in couple of months, who knows. If that be the case, some MPs might not even make it back. The civil coup being orchestrated by Raila and Ruto should be faced with the strongest rule of law. The ongoing ethnic cleansing under the command of Raila Odinga and William Ruto should be escalated to the International Court of Justice at the Hague for prosecution.

In our opinion, Raila, Ruto and other ODM operatives have joined the ranks of Slobodan Milosevic, Agusto Pinochet, Sadam Hussein, Idi Amin, etc as having committed crimes against humanity.

Let it be known that there was no justification for Raila and ODM to rock the country into violence and ethnic cleansing. The fact that they could not follow the known procedures for addressing their concerns of election flaws left a lot to be desired of them, a fact that has rendered them irrelevant in Kenyan politics in the years to come.

The international community should stop meddling in the affairs of our sovereignty as a nation, and work within the framework of international law, agreements and conventions. It is no secret that Raila and Ruto are the key perpetrators of the current genocide in Kenya.

They have consistently and persistently incited certain communities to engage in ethnic cleansing. The international community should be working on prosecuting Raila and Ruto at the international court of justice instead of “payukaring” (rhetoric) about the electoral process in our country. Our country spent over Kshs 10 billion (USD160 million) in the just concluded general elections.

The nation has more and pressing priorities that this back and forth noise making by Raila and Ruto about flawed elections, in which they are the key culprits of grossly violating and tampering with the electoral process.

Conventional wisdom would require that we all put this election out of the way and move on. However, greed and selfishness seems to prevail whereby individuals who grossly and unsuccessfully violated the electoral process; now are staging a civil coup to ascend to the presidency at the expense of innocent Kenyans.

Raila and Ruto enjoy lavish life styles while those of rank and file of Kibera, Bondo, and Eldoret North etc languish in poverty.

The way forward: We the people of Kenya would like to state in unequivocal terms that crime against humanity in our country will not go unpunished. To this end, we are preparing a brief for submission before the International Court of Justice against Raila and Ruto.

We are asking the international community to stop fanning violence through their ignorance of the political dynamics in our country. For example, the EU election observer, had given Kenyan a clean bill of health on the elections, so, how did their observations change? How come they did not see the massive rigging in ODM strongholds? They might have gone to see the elephants like Dick Morris.

We are asking the current government to use whatever means necessary to restore the country to normalcy, and should there be a need to go back to the ballot, let it be so.

We asking our brothers and sister to desist from violence and put the elections aside. Our country has structures of governance that should be respected by all.

To this end, Raila and ODM should seek redress through the established structures of governance and desist from unorthodox means of attempting ascension to power. ODM can yank the Kibaki administration through a vote of no confidence in parliament if the judiciary fails to adjudicate the matter in court of law in their favor.

They have the numbers, so, why rock the country in violence. This is the level of sanity that we are calling for.

Finally, “the way to win in any contest rests heavily in the knowledge of how to lose”. If you do not know how to lose, you can never be a winner no matter what?

By People Foundation, Inc, > Social Transformation Advocacy Group

Published by API/APN africanpress@getmail.no