Kenyan’s opposition leader Raila Odinda has been berated by international relations analyst, Dr. Vladimir Antwi for withdrawing from the country’s upcoming presidential election re-run.
He felt Mr. Odinga was recoiling after he was unable to bulldoze his way into power through incessant demand for immediate electoral reforms.
The opposition leader wanted Kenyan’s electoral commission, that declared incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta winner of the 8 August poll that was annulled by the Supreme Court, reconstituted The court annulled the result after finding irregularities and declaring it “neither transparent or verifiable.
Meanwhile, Mr Odinga said his withdrawal would give the electoral commission enough time to introduce reforms that will help deliver a more credible election.
But Dr. Antwi-Danso, who is the Director of Academic Affairs at the Ghana Armed Forces and Staff College, explicitly told TV3 Tuesday that Raila Odinga “has not taken the wise decision”. In his view, the way he has handled the situation after the court ruling is not the way to go about things.
He believes Mr. Odinga should have used the constitutional channel to get the reforms he wanted and not to play to the gallery. Better still, he suggested, the opposition leader should have probably asked the current government to stay in power for a year whilst steps are taken to effect the constitutional changes he has been calling for.
“But demanding that changes should be now is not fair,” he remarked. The latest decision would rather give Kenyatta the power to rule kenya the way he likes, so Raila Odinga would be “cutting his nose to spit his face”.
But in a 32-point statement in solidarity with Mr. Odinga’s decision, National Super Alliance (NASA) insisted that the upcoming election should be held to the standard ordered by the Supreme Court, that is,”in strict conformity with the Constitution and written law.
We have provided a checklist of what we deem to be the “irreducible minimum” changes required to ensure compliance”. It accused the government of failing to make these changes on the grounds of time constraints.
“We have come to the conclusion that there is no intention on the part of the IEBC to undertake any changes to its operations and personnel to ensure that the “illegalities and irregularities” that led to the invalidation of the 8th August, 2008 do not happen again. All indications are that the election scheduled for 26 October will be worse than the previous one.”