THERE were assurances from President Uhuru Kenyatta and acting Interior CS Fred Matiang'i that the government will protect the property and lives of Kenyans before, during and after the just concluded repeat presidential election. However, in most parts of the country goons, and in some cases the police themselves, destroyed property, broke into other people’s homes and businesses. Now the question many Kenyans are asking is: Was the promise just lip service? Where were the law enforcement officers?
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STILL on matters to do with security officers: Where did the anti-riot water cannons go? This was a question police officers who were quelling violence in parts of the Nyanza region were overheard asking. To them the trucks fitted with panels and brushes that can clear materials used by rioters to barricade the roads could have helped them. However, anti-riot police officers who were deployed to the volatile Nyanza region, where the residents staged huge anti-IEBC demonstrations, were seen clearing the roads using their hands and, in some places, they forced the locals to remove the stones and boulders.
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DID the foreign observers 'boycott' the National Tallying Centre at Bomas of Kenya? Unlike at the August 8 polls, when foreign observers flooded the auditorium where IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati was giving periodical updates, this time round, no observer could be spotted in the generally empty auditorium, begging the question whether they boycotted the tallying process. And also unlike the previous election of August, where the observers and diplomats were issuing press statements one after the other, this time round their silence is curious.
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A section of Jubilee MPs who met on Friday at a high- end city hotel were overheard saying that had former Senate Speaker Ekwee Ethuro used the same energy and enthusiasm to campaign for President Uhuru Kenyatta in the run up to the August General Election, may be he would not have lost his seat to former Bungoma Governor Kenneth Lusaka. Of late, Ekwee is an active member of a new association known as The Council of Kenya Professionals whose other members include former Budalang'i MP Ababu Namwamba and lawyer Danson Mungatana. The group has been pushing for the punishment of the opposition leaders in case of violence during the repeat presidential election. Or are they just looking for jobs in the next government?
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A politician who defected to Jubilee recently is an unhappy man. Reason? The man had in public and in private promised to deliver as many votes as he could to President Uhuru Kenyatta and he was to be rewarded with a State job. He performed dismally.