Kenya police detain senior opposition official David Ndii Crackdown follows disputed elections
Police have arrested one of Kenya’smost prominent economists as part of a crackdown against the opposition following disputed elections, opposition officials and activists said.
David Ndii, a senior adviser to the opposition National Super Alliance (Nasa), was detained on Sunday evening at a resort on the Kenyan coast and taken to Nairobi, the opposition said. Police confirmed the arrest but gave no further details.
Dennis Onyango, an opposition spokesman, said he expected the arrest to be “the start of a bigger crackdown”.
“All the signs suggest we’re going back to the Moi era when if you differed [from the government] you got arrested,” he said, referring to the autocratic rule of former president Danial arap Moi. “What worries us is the conduct of the police. They’re behaving like kidnappers, just running around.”
Kenya was plunged into its deepest crisis in a decade following a disputed election in August and an opposition boycott of a repeat presidential vote in October.
Raila Odinga, the veteran opposition leader, has refused to accept President Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory in the October 26 rerun. Mr Kenyatta was inaugurated last week, but Mr Odinga has launched a so-called national resistance movement in a bid to force a fresh vote.
The authorities have responded with force to counter opposition attempts to hold protests and rallies, using tear gas and live ammunition to target Mr Odinga’s convoy and his supporters.
About a dozen people have been killed in clashes between the police and opposition supporters in the last month. More than 70 people have died in politically-related violence since the August vote.
John Githongo, a former government anti-corruption chief and a pro-democracy activist, described Mr Ndii’s arrest as “really sinister”.
“It’s not only what is done but how it’s done,” he said. “It’s being done in a way that harks back to one of the worst moments in Kenya’s history, the 1990s, when people were disappeared after being arrested.”
Mwende Gatabaki, Mr Ndii’s wife, said on Monday the officers who arrested her husband refused to tell her what crime he had committed. She was briefly detained when she went to the nearest police station to look for him.
Opposition lawyers said they expected Mr Ndii to appear in court on Monday facing charges of incitement. The economist was last week appointed to head the organising committee of the resistance movement’s so-called people’s assembly.
The committee was expected to present its findings by December 12, when the opposition alliance is due to swear in Mr Odinga as the “people’s president”. The opposition has yet to clarify what this will entail.
Mr Ndii has been one of the more prominent figures to discuss the possibility of areas loyal to Mr Odinga in western Kenya seceding from the rest of the east African nation. Mr Odinga opposes secession.
Kenya’s crisis began when the supreme court nullified the result of the August presidential election, citing “illegalities” and “irregularities” in the vote tallying, and ordered a repeat poll. Mr Odinga withdrew from the second vote, claiming the electoral commission had not been sufficiently reformed to ensure a fair vote.
He urged his supporters not to vote and Mr Kenyatta was re-elected with 98.3 per cent of the vote, on a turnout of 39 per cent.
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