'We've been to hell and back'
2008-04-18 07:59
Nairobi - Kenya's opposition leader was sworn into office as the country's prime minister on Thursday, fulfilling a key step in a power-sharing deal aimed at ending a deadly political crisis in the East African nation.
Within hours, a feared gang promised to heed new Prime Minister Raila Odinga's call to stop its campaign of terror in the capital - one small sign that resolving Kenya's political crisis could help return peace and stability to the fragile nation.
More than 1 500 people were killed and 300 000 displaced following the December elections that both Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki claimed to win. With the violence escalating, the rivals agreed in February to share power - but then wrangled for weeks over how to divide up their coalition Cabinet.
On Thursday, ministers finally took up their positions, 20 each from Kibaki's and Odinga's camps. Kibaki's party retained the key finance and internal security ministries and Raila's allies will head up agriculture and oversee local government.
Oath of loyalty
The entire government, including Odinga, swore an oath of loyalty to the president.
"Kenyans will be watching your performance and they'll judge you by the services you deliver," Kibaki said at the inauguration ceremony.
Odinga said Kenya was embarking on a new era of unity.
"We have been to hell and back. Never in our history will we return to this time," he said. "We are not creating two governments in one: It is one government."
He also used his inauguration to address the Mungiki gang that has been terrorising the capital. At least 14 people have died since the banned gang launched a protest against police on Monday that has paralysed parts of Nairobi.
"I want to tell our brothers the Mungiki we shall talk to them. We should stop beating each other. We should stop killing each other," Odinga said in Swahili. "We should speak together as Kenyans."
Later, he told local Citizen TV he was expressing a personal view that had yet to be decided as policy.
But the Mungiki responded by promising to call off their violent protests at Odinga's request.
Frustrations laid bare
Kenya is a key US ally and regional economic and military powerhouse that for years was one of the most stable nations in East Africa. But the disputed December elections laid bare frustrations over poverty and corruption - and ethnic rivalries in a country where Kikuyus, the tribe Kibaki belongs to, are perceived to dominate others, including the Luo, Odinga's ethnic group.
The apparent olive branch offered to the Mungiki, a gang dedicated to spreading Kikuyu culture, by Odinga, a Luo, is another strange strand in Kenya's web of politics, ethnicity and violence.
Many Mungiki say they were approached during the violence by Kikuyu politicians to act as an ethnic militia but refused to get heavily involved because the gang was angered by the extrajudicial killings of more than 450 Kikuyu youths last year.
The gang blamed police in Kibaki's administration in the deaths. A government-funded human rights organisation also found "strong circumstantial" evidence implicating authorities. However, police deny the charges.
- SAPA