Schools and a number of businesses closed in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Wednesday as the nation’s main opposition planned to resume anti-government protests that have left dozens of people dead.
(Bloomberg) — Schools and a number of businesses closed in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Wednesday as the nation’s main opposition planned to resume anti-government protests that have left dozens of people dead.
Raila Odinga urged his supporters to take to the streets for three days through Friday, to demonstrate against high living costs and back his longstanding political demands.
Security forces wearing protective vests and helmets, and anti-riot vehicles deployed on the streets in parts of Nairobi early Wednesday. Traffic on roads leading into the city’s central business district and around major suburbs was unusually low.
Odinga, who narrowly lost last August’s presidential election to William Ruto, called for protests soon after the Supreme Court rejected his bid to overturn the result. The veteran political leader has demanded a new audit of the count and wants the opposition to have a greater say in the appointment of electoral-agency officials — a process he says is controlled by the government.
Read More: What Is Behind Kenya’s Deadly Opposition Protests: QuickTake
More than 20 people have been killed and dozens injured in the demonstrations this month alone, the United Nations human rights office said July 14. In light of calls for further protests, the UN urged the authorities to ensure the right to peaceful assembly and “any use of force must be guided by the principles of legality, necessity, proportionality and non-discrimination. Firearms should never be used to disperse protests.”
Kenya has suffered election-related conflict for decades, with the worst occurring after a 2007 vote, when at least 1,100 people died and about 350,000 others were forced to flee their homes. Last year’s election was largely peaceful, though tensions have persisted in what’s seen as an investor-friendly nation in an unstable region, and is a hub for the UN and brands including Coca-Cola Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and Google parent Alphabet Inc.
The government ordered schools closed until further notice in Nairobi, the port city of Mombasa and the southwestern city of Kisumu after violence erupted during last week’s protests, and businesses and infrastructure were vandalized.
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The authorities have vowed to crack down on any renewed unrest.
“National security agencies have deployed all the available resources to ensure that scenes witnessed on Wednesday do not happen again,” Interior Secretary Kithure Kindiki said in a statement on Tuesday. “Anyone planning to unleash violence on Kenyans is hereby warned to cease and desist.”
The latest round of protests come after Ruto’s administration raised taxes at a time when inflation has remained above the central bank’s target range for more than a year. The president is pursuing an aggressive budget plan anchored on increasing government revenue and slowing borrowing — measures he says are necessary to avoid bigger shocks like defaulting on its debt, as has happened in other frontier market economies like Zambia.
Odinga’s coalition has focused it’s messaging on demands that the government eases Kenyans’ economic pain, and has asked supporters to come out and bang cooking pots “to signify lack of food,” Martha Karua, who was Odinga’s running mate in the last election, told reporters on Tuesday.“We encourage Kenyans to continue picketing, demonstrating and protesting in their own ways in their own local areas.”
–With assistance from David Herbling.
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