Opposition targets Kenyatta family business, other firms in 'economic boycott'

03 Novembre 2017

Nairobi, Kenya, November 3 (Infosplusgabon) -  The opposition coalition in Kenya has named a milk firm owned by President Uhuru Kenyatta's family business, Brookside Dairies, at the start of its "economic boycott" plan to sabotage the government.

Also targeted are mobile phone firm, Safaricom, partly owned by Vodafone of UK and Bidco, a manufacturer of household goods.

Members of the National Super Alliance (NASA), which has transformed itself into a "National Resistance Movement", said the announcement of the companies targeted by the opposition boycott was a response to the announcement on 31 October to sabotage the government.

The announcement was made by "Principals of the Alliance", who laid out a broad roadmap for putting the country on the path to "ending electoral autocracy" and returning to democracy through free, fair and credible elections.

"The broad agenda the Principals rolled out include positive action programmes like Economic Liberation, People’s Assembly, non-cooperation with illegal National Government and defence of the right to peaceful protest," NASA leaders said in a statement read during a news conference at Okoa Kenya, the offices of the opposition coalition.

"The economic liberation would be conducted through targeted boycott of companies, corporations and businesses that are beneficiaries and supporters of this regime that is destroying Kenya and frustrating the dreams and aspirations of our people."

The principals left the task of interpreting and implementing the broad roadmap to the "National Resistance Movement (NRM)."

The Parliamentary wing of the NRM said it was leading efforts to kick off the programme of implementing one specific provision of its programme for action called "economic liberation".

"We want an equal voice for everyone. We do not want a situation where certain people feel they have more voice than others," said lawmaker Gladys Wanga.

She added: "We have a long and comprehensive list of companies, both local and global on our radars and which we will be naming at intervals. We wish to emphasise that the list of companies will come officially and formally from NASA. Any list that will not have come from us will be fake with regard to this struggle. We ask our people to stick to the list we will provide from time to time."

Opposition leader Raila Odinga failed to participate in the 26 October presidential rerun citing the failure of the elections body to undertake reforms before the vote to make it transparent.

The rerun was necessitated by the Supreme Court annuling the first round vote because of illegalities and iregularities. President Kenyatta went on to win the rerun with 98.26% of the votes with about 39% turnout.

The opposition coalition has been blaming Safaricom for denying it victory in the first round.

Safaricom was contracted by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to transmit election results from the electronic voter kits at the polling stations to the IEBC servers.

All this data was to be conveyed via Virtual Private Network (VPN) to ensure that there was no tampering with the results before reaching the servers.

According to the NASA leadership, Safaricom transmitted the results, which never went to the IEBC tallying centre because they were sent to a cloud server in Europe, thereby denying the opposition its victory.

NASA said it had come to its knowledge that one of these VPNs terminated at a cloud server registered in Spain but operated from France under the control of OT Morpho, a French firm which provided the devices used to relay results.

However, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore, who is currently on a sick leave, has disputed the opposition coalition claims, saying the results were transmitted to the national tallying centre and posted online as proof.

FIN/INFOSPLUSGABON/UHJ/GABON 2017

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