Call fresh polls, Raila urges Uhuru

Cord leader Raila Odinga, Kisumu County Senator Anyang Nyong’o (right) and a other local leaders outside Kisumu County Assembly after holding a closed door meeting on April 22, 2015. PHOTO | FILE |

What you need to know:

  • Cord leader accuses President of failing to uphold the rule of law
  • The President recently suspended commission chairman Mumo Matemu and deputy Irene Keino after Parliament asked him to set up a tribunal to investigate them.

Cord on Saturday asked President Kenyatta to call a fresh General Election “to save Kenya from total collapse”.

Its leader Raila Odinga said the crippling of the anti-corruption commission following Mr Kenyatta’s purge of suspected corrupt officials shows that the government has become dysfunctional right from the top.

An overhaul, Mr Odinga said, is the only way of saving Kenya.

“The President needs to seriously consider calling fresh elections to save our country from total collapse,” he said in a statement. “Our national system has collapsed in every sense.”

The Opposition leader said the integrity question that lingered about Jubilee leadership before the March 4, 2013 General Election has resurfaced.

“We are back to the integrity issues that came up during the campaigns: a leadership demanding of others to observe integrity provisions that the President and his deputy failed to observe from the start,” he said.

“The government is dysfunctional because the top leadership did not believe in the new Constitution and does not believe in the rule of law,” he said.

“The decision to ignore procedures, including the law and institutional arrangements, was meant to cripple the war on corruption rather than support it.”

The former Prime Minister accused the President of hatching a plot to protect corrupt government officials on the pretext of leading the war on corruption.

He said the events that have unfolded since Mr Kenyatta’s March 26 State of the Nation address reveal an all-too-familiar cycle of the country’s leadership abetting corruption while pretending to fight it.

“We can see clearly that the President has embarked on a familiar rhetorical warfare similar to that of the “war on magendo” of the 1980s that only left magendo thriving,” he said.

“The President’s action was similar to Narc’s much hyped zero-tolerance to corruption and “radical surgery of the Judiciary” that ended up with the Anglo-Leasing scandal right at the heart of the administration.”

In his address to Parliament, President Kenyatta ordered government officials who had been linked to corruption to step aside for investigations.

Following the order and the release of names of officials suspected to have engaged in corrupt deals by the anti-graft body, four Cabinet secretaries and Nairobi Senator Mike Sonko were among officials who stepped aside to pave way for investigations.

But the “List of Shame” also hit the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, with its commissioner Jane Onsongo resigning unexpectedly on March 31.
The President recently suspended commission chairman Mumo Matemu and deputy Irene Keino after Parliament asked him to set up a tribunal to investigate them.

Mr Odinga believes the narrative unfolded so because the President had politicised the war on corruption.