At least 24 people have been shot by police in violence during Kenya’s disputed election, including many killed in protests in opposition strongholds after President Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory late Friday, according to Kenyan human rights observers.
The Kenya Red Cross Society said it picked up 93 people injured by the violence. MSF Kenya, which has its own ambulances and involves figures not counted by the Red Cross, reported 54 people were treated at its clinics, raising the toll to at least 150 wounded.
Police on Saturday fired live bullets and tear gas on protesters in volatile areas of Nairobi and other parts of the country, provoking anger from opposition supporters and condemnation from human rights activists.
Kenya faced its third successive disputed election after the opposition National Super Alliance claimed its candidate, Raila Odinga, won but Kenyatta, the incumbent, had colluded with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to steal the election. LA Times
Kenyatta won with a decisive 54 percent of the vote to nearly 45 percent for Odinga, but the bitter dispute over the integrity of the election process tempered what many Kenyans had hoped would be a celebration of democracy in a regional power known for its economic promise and long-term stability.
The Opposition alleges that whereas the voting process was free and fair, the electronic transmission of results was tampered with using credentials of a murdered senior IEBC IT official about a week to the day of the elections. Postmortem results showed he had been tortured before the killing. A woman in his company was also found murdered.
According to the opposition, results transmitted were doctored and not the actual counted results at the more than 40,000 polling stations across the country.
The Chairman of the IEBC is a Seventh Day Church Elder Ezra Chiloba. Chiloba has denied that the IEBC servers were compromised and maintains that the results submitted are an accurate will of the people in electing their political representatives.
The Cabinet Secretary for Internal Security is Fred Matiang’i also a Seventh Day Church Elder. In a Press Conference, Matiang’i denied that the police had used live bullets at protestors nor killing anyone. He later explained that anyone who might have been confronted by the police was a criminal. International media report at least 24 killed by police while the opposition yesterday in a statement said at least 100 people had been killed including at least 10 children.
Should the opposition choose to take the matter to the Supreme Court, they will be met with yet another Seventh Day Adventist Church elder, The Chief Justice of Kenya David Maraga. This is however unlikely as Opposition leaders said they will not be taking the matters to the courts.
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