Kenya Opposition Plans More Protests

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 16th., (NY Times) — Kenya was in partial lockdown mode on Wednesday as opposition supporters pressed ahead with plans to hold protests across the country. Demonstrators clashed with police in the streets of Mombasa, Kenya's biggest port and a main artery to the rest of East Africa. Witnesses said that hundreds of demonstrators, many of them Muslims, tried to block roundabouts in the city center but that police officers in riot gear chased them away with tear gas. Previous unrest in Mombasa has seriously disrupted food and fuel supplies, leading several neighboring countries like Uganda and Rwanda to ration gasoline. Many Muslims in Kenya support the opposition because they feel that the Kenyan government, a close American ally, has cracked down harshly on members of their community.

In Nairobi, Kenya's capital, the streets were quiet Wednesday morning. A heavy rain that fell overnight and continued into the morning seemed to dampen spirits and diminish energy for another round of street clashes. Police officers were clumped at strategic intersections across the city, but few demonstrators had gathered before noon. Many businesses were closed, though streets were open and public buses were operating normally. The last time the opposition held major rallies, fighting broke out in Nairobi's slums, with several people hacked to death and many businesses burned. Gangs of protesters with backpacks full of rocks terrorized certain neighborhoods. But there was little evidence of that on Wednesday. Kenya has remained on edge since a flawed election on Dec. 27 ignited unrest and violence across the country, claiming more than 600 lives. Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent president, was declared the winner over Raila Odinga, a top opposition leader, but several election observers said the government rigged the tallying of the results to give the president a slim, 11th-hour victory. American diplomats in Kenya have done their own analysis of poll results and concluded that the election was so flawed that it was impossible to tell who really won. Outraged opposition supporters attacked members of the president's ethnic group, with many people killed by machete-wielding mobs. More than 200,000 people have been displaced.

On Tuesday, the opposition scored its first political victory since the election, by choosing one of its own members to be the speaker of Kenya's parliament, an influential position. The opposition party won more parliament seats than the government in the December elections and used its muscle to vote in the speaker in an acrimonious, theatrical parliament session on Tuesday night. Opposition supporters celebrated afterward across the country. Many Kenyans now hope that tensions will decrease because the opposition has demonstrated that it can affect the government through its numbers in Parliament and does not need to take its grievances to the streets.
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
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