Odinga launches campaign
2007-10-06 20:05
Nairobi - Tens of thousands of Kenyans streamed into a Nairobi park on Saturday as opposition leader and former political prisoner Raila Odinga launched his campaign for December's knife-edge presidential election.
Many came by foot, wearing paper hats or T-shirts bearing Odinga's portrait or chanting songs in praise of the veteran politician, now seeking to become what he called the "People's President."
Others arrived at the Uhuru Park in packed buses, with passengers clinging to the doors and chanting slogans in support of the main opposition party Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) which has vowed to evict Mwai Kibaki, the septuagenarian president seeking a second and final term.
Recent polls give Odinga 47% ahead of Kibaki's 38% and Kalonzo Musyoka -- a former foreign minister -- eight percent.
"Today we are seeing off and burying a government of discrimination and oppression," elder Pekesha Ndeje of the coastal Giriama tribe, one of the few tribes that still heed to traditional power structures, told the crowd.
"Raila is a leader who says what he means and means what he says. Kenya needs a true reformer and there is no better reformer that him," said maverick politician and one-time Odinga arch-foe James Orengo.
The ODM got a crucial shot in the arm when Health Minister Charity Ngilu threw her weight on Saturday behind Odinga, 62, and accused her current boss of "not wanting reforms."
"Odinga understands the pains of Kenyans, he wants true reforms like me ... but we know whoever we put in the top offices did not want change," said Ngilu, herself a one-time presidential aspirant.
Kibaki, who last month launched the Party of National Unity (PNU), a coalition of several parties including 2002 runners-up the Kenya African National Union (Kanu), comes from the economically and demographically dominant Kikuyu tribe.
Odinga comes from western Kenya Luo tribe, which appears to have ganged up with the Luyha tribe against the Kikuyu.
Although the rally unfolded peacefully except for a few scuffles and congestion, police were present and ready to step in in case of violence - common in Kenyan polls.
Meanwhile Kibaki hit the road in the Rift Valley province and pleaded to be re-elected on grounds he has fostered economic growth in the east African nation, home to about 35 million people.
"Let's work together as a team and develop. When I finish my (second) term, I will go and farm," Kibaki told a rally in the Rift Valley town of Nakuru.
Analysts have described the election as a "watershed" since it pits Kibaki against former allies such as Odinga he fired last year for successfully campaigning against government-backed constitutional reforms.
The electoral panel is yet to announce the exact date for polls, the fourth multiparty elections since pluralism was introduced in 1992.