From: Judy Miriga
Good People,
I have received unsubstantiated information that some of the election officials are planning to staff balot boxes for TNA Presidential candidates and sneak them in. To dispense such rumours, we want to know and be told what security plan the IEBC with election monitoring team have put in place to safeguard such incidents?
Thank you all and my Peace prevail…..
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
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Kenya invites US leader Obama for president’s swearing in
By EDITH FORTUNATE ( email the author)
Posted Friday, March 1 2013 at 08:47
United States President Barack Obama is among world leaders invited for the swearing in ceremony of Kenya’s fourth president.
Head of Public Service Francis Kimemia said Friday the government has invited the British Prime Minister David Cameron, and European Union Head of States.
Also invited are presidents of regional body, the East African Community (EAC). They include Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, Tanzania’s Jakaya Kikwete, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Burundi’s Pierre Nkurunziza.
“You can be sure that we will invite the American President. If he cannot come then he can delegate. If you go to the European Union we have the various countries,” said Mr Kimemia during a media briefing on the assumption of office for a new president at the Hotel InterContinental, Nairobi.
“If you go to the continent of Africa, we have key representatives since we cannot invite everybody to come and witness this historic occasion,” he stated.
Mr Kimemia urged Kenyans to maintain peace before, during and after the elections.
“We urge Kenyans to maintain peace. We have put in place everything necessary to ensure this process is successful. We have mobilised all our internal security organs to ensure that Kenyans are fully secure round the clock,” he said.
The new president is expected to take the oath of office on March 26, three weeks after Kenyans go to the polls.
However, this will only happen if there is a clear winner in the March 4 General Election.
A candidate is required to garner 50 per cent plus one of the total votes cast in the elections and at least 25 per cent in half of the 47 Counties countrywide to be declared as duly elected president.
At the briefing, Inspector General of Police David Kimaiyo said 290 CID officers will be deployed to the 47 Counties to monitor hate and violence and gather evidence leading to the successful prosecution of electoral violence cases.
If there is no clear winner on March 4, a run off pitting the two top candidates will be held within 30 days after the first vote.
Online fury over CNN’s story on unnamed militia group
Kenyans online have reacted angrily at a CNN story about an unnamed militia group preparing to cause mayhem in the Rift Valley in the election period.
The story, uploaded late Thursday on the CNN website and broadcast on the CNN as a curtain-raiser to Kenya’s elections scheduled for Monday, shows four people whose faces are obscured carrying, what the reporter Nima Elbagir, describes as “guns fashioned from iron piping, home-made swords and bullets bought from the blackmarket”.
The story is titled “Kenyans armed and ready to vote”.
The bile from the online community was that the story ran on the day that there was a rally at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park about peaceful elections, yet the story did not even mention the rally, or the preparations by the police to ensure acts of crime and violence do not happen at election time.
There was also no mention of the unprecedented move earlier in the week where all presidential candidates met and made a public vow that they will concede defeat, and if they felt aggrieved, they will go to the courts.
The peace messages being aired in mainstream Kenyan media and the deployment of 99,000 police officers to maintain order, are indications the country is keen to avoid a repeat of the 2007-2008 chaos.
On Friday, Kenya’s online community revived the popular hashtag (keywords used to follow conversations on the Twitter) #SomeoneTellCNN and poked holes in the CNN story.
“A story needs to be balanced, where is the side of the coin showing people who are going around preaching peace?” posed Michelle Anekeya in her tweet to the reporter, Nima Elbagir, whose handle is @NimaCNN.
In a separate tweet, Ms Anekeya added: “Reporting like this is what makes them lose rating both in the States and soon here in Kenya @NimaCNN we want peace!”
Also Grant Brooke posed: “Where was CNN when all the candidates stood together and told their followers to commit no acts of violence?”
In a follow-up tweet Grant added: “Parachute-in journalists in search of disaster completely miss the great story of peace and reform b4 their eyes”.
Gideon Serem too had queries for the global, American-based broadcaster: “Don’t your journalists have anything positive to report about the Kenyan election”.
“Isn’t there just something else to anticipate apart from your WAR & ARMS, it just sounds twisted,” noted a person whose twitter handle is @AverageKenyan.
“#SomeoneTellCNN that (there’ll be) no war and Kenya will vote peacefully, no running battles, only Kenyans running home to celebrate a new president,” @AverageKenyan added in a separate tweet.
The CNN reporter concentrated on the four men in a forest, whom she said, were “local Kikuyu militia” armed and ready to fight, because, in the 2007 post-election chaos, they were caught off-guard.
The men in jeans, t-shirts and one in a singlet, rolled around in the grass, with one of them acting as the commander carrying a knobkerrie and looking at the trio in front of him as if conducting a choir.
The alleged militia are shown in the CNN clip carrying pangas, arrows, swords and metal bars. The reporter said they were training and went ahead to pick a sound bite of one of the men, with his back to the camera, saying, “ if you need peace, you have to prepare for war”.
Nima also interviewed a farmer, named James Maina, who she said was displaced from his farm.
“Some of the people we’ve been speaking to say that they are going to start fighting back, do you ever think of doing that?” Nima, the CNN reporter asked.
“Sioni kama nitabaki nipigane…” Maina’s response in Kiswahili fades off, and the reporter translates that to mean “I have got nothing left worth fighting for”.
She quoted an undated report of the Human Rights Watch which she said spoke of Kenyans arming, and also makes passing reference to the response of government spokesperson who said the police were on top of things.
Though the violence was severe in 2007-2008, the CNN reporter had this to say: “In a country that has for decades known violence following elections, tribal leaders say preparing for the worst, is their mission.”
She did not mention the tribal leaders that she spoke to.
Crispus Mahea agrees with the CNN story: “The question is, why are we preaching peace so hard? CNN’s story is credible, the threat of violence is very real people”.
Most Kenyans are quite sensitive to depictions of violence and strife in Kenya, when the country is just calm. The experience of 2007-2008 when tourists fled the country and Western nations issued travel advisories against Kenya did not go down well with the ordinary citizens.