Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta was sworn in yesterday for a second term as police fired tear gas to disperse angry opposition supporters, in what many hope is the closing act of a gruelling and divisive election drama.
The pomp and ceremony ended with a 21-gun salute, but was overshadowed by chaos in another part of Nairobi, where police engaged in running battles with opposition supporters trying to gather for a rally.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga was meant to attend the “memorial rally” to honor more than 50 people killed, mostly by police, in four months of political upheaval.
Photo: AFP
However, police kept the planned venue strictly sealed off.
Chaos also marked the start of the swearing-in ceremony at the 60,000-seat Kasarani stadium, as Kenyatta supporters attempted to force their way into the venue, prompting police to fire tear gas while officers on horseback struggled to curb the flow of people.
“I just want to see President Uhuru Kenyatta because I voted for him, why are we being beaten like NASA [the opposition coalition]?” asked Janet Wambua, who was among the angry crowd.
Joseph Irungu of the interior ministry planning committee had said there was space for 40,000 people who did not get in to watch the event on big screens outside the stadium.
However, no such screens were provided, further angering the crowd.
Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, took the oaths of office in front of 13 mostly African heads of state, including from South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia and Somalia.
Prime ministers, foreign ministers and special envoys represented other African nations, as well as Qatar, Serbia, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates.
The inauguration came after the Supreme Court validated Kenyatta’s victory in last month’s rerun poll.
However, analysts say the swearing-in might not draw a line under the country’s political crisis, for Odinga has vowed to fight on.
The NASA coalition described yesterday’s inauguration as a “despotic coronation.”
The electoral strife goes back to an Aug. 8 poll that was annulled in September by the Supreme Court, citing “irregularities and illegalities.”
The court ordered a rerun last month that was boycotted by the opposition, handing Kenyatta a landslide of 98 percent of votes cast by just 39 percent of the electorate.
The disputed election season has split the nation along ethnic and regional lines.
However, political violence has not reached the scale of the bloody aftermath of elections in 2007, when 1,100 were killed.
Odinga finds himself denied the presidency for a fourth time in his long career.
He contends he was cheated and refuses to recognize the result.
He has vowed to found a “third republic” — following independence from Britain in 1963 and a new constitution adopted in 2010 — and pursue protests and economic boycotts aimed at undermining Kenyatta’s “dictatorship.”
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