Reports Ndira-Uradi In Awendo Town.

FOUR people were hacked to death while scores of others were seriously injured at Kitere in Kamagambo South Location, Rongo district within Migori County following the recently flawed much ODM grass root elections.

Scores of people who sustained serious injuries were hospitalized; while others believed to have suffered serious bodily wounds inflicted by machetes {pangas} escaped and run into the nearby sugar cane plantations.

Several suspects who are believe to have masterminded the bloody confrontation between the two groups were taken into police custody for questioning while tension remain high in the area next to Moi University College, Kitere Campus.

The incident took place in late Saturday afternoon. The combatants groups are believed to belong into two rival political camps vehemently opposed to each other, one such groups are reported to be rotating around the Minister for Public Services Dalmas Otieno who is the area MP, while the other group comprises the potential parliamentary aspirants for the 2012 elections in both Rongo and Awendo constituencies.

During the recently concluded but much flawed ODM grass root election the two groups opposed to each other had emerged and held two parallel elections in Kitre sub-branch of the ODM party. And the Saturday’s bloody confrontation between the officials of the two parallel sub-branches came about when one group had grouped at Kitere ready to open a new sub-branch office.

Unconfirmed reports say the attackers who suffered heavy causalities were suspected to be the supporters of the Minister Otieno’s camp. They went to the site in futile attempt to disrupt and disperse those who had planned to open the sub-branch ODM office in Kitere.

The police had difficult time to control and restore law and orders. By the time of writing this report, the bodies of the victims were still lying at the scene uncollected.

Several politically related deaths were also reported in Rongo during the 2007 general elections.

So far the ODM elections board chairman Eng Phillip Okundi had nullified the elections in this particular sub-branch and ordered for a repeat of the exercise. It was haphazardly conducted producing two sets of parallel sub-branches, and the party supporters placed the blame on the supporters of Dalmas Otieno and the gross interference into the party matters by members of the Provincial Administration in the area.

A week earlier before the party grass root elections in Rongo and Awendo district the Minister had convene an urgent meting held in Rongo Town where the mode of the impending elections were discussed in detailed accounts.

Selectively invited delegates from the ten administrative locations in both Rongo and Awendo district numbering about 400 people mainly known supporters of Dalmas Otieno were in attendance and it was later rumored that strategic plans on how to lock out those suspected to be allied to the new parliamentary aspirants were allege deliberated on.

The ODM sub-branch election had been scheduled for Kitere, and close to 300 delegates had already gathered at the venue ready for the elections when the Location chief and an assistant chief appeared at Kitere and made an announcement that the election venue had been changed abruptly and was switched to a new venue at Rakwaro Center about seven kilometers away.

This abrupt change of venue made it impossible for the delegates to walk and rush to the new venue due to lack of quick means of transport. Those who had their own vehicle rushed to Rakwaro while the rest made it to the new venue by foot, and the time they reached the new polls center, the elections had been long held and completed by Dalmas Otieno’s. Other delegates reused to travel to the new venue and organized for a parallel election at the old venue,.

The situation was even worse at Kuja where the district branch elections were held the following day when several delegates were locked out and sent packing.

The party members and leader who felt short changed at Kuja and locked out of Migori Teachers Training College for the County branch elections then moved to court and obtained an injunctions order, but the election officials refused to accept the court papers and defiantly went on with the election at the County branch which was conducted on consensus basis not by secret balloting a stipulated by the ODM constitution.

All these political manipulations are what breed the last Saturday death orgies at Kitere when those who felt wronged through political machinations resorted to to act of bloody violence, which claimed the lives of innocent people at Kitere, The death toll figure is expected to be on the higher sides when those who run into sugar plantations with serious bodily wounds an those hospitalized are accounted for.

The violence prone Rongo politics is gravitating between the Minister Otieno on one side and his perennial arrival the former cabinet Minister George Ochillo Ayacko on the other side.

Ends