NASA leader Raila Odinga's adviser Salim Lone. [Photo/Hivisasa.com]
NASA leader Raila Odinga's adviser Salim Lone has attacked President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy President William Ruto's Jubilee administration.
This is after a majority of Kenyans snubbed this year's national Jamhuri Day celebrations held at Kasarani Stadium in Nairobi, on Tuesday, as Kenya marked 54 years of independence since 1964.
Only a handful of people attended the national ceremony with a larger space of the stadium remaining unoccupied compared to past Jamhuri Day celebrations.
Lone issued a statement criticisng Uhuru as indicated below.
"UHURU’S LEGITIMACY CONTINUES TO BE SHADOWED BY THE ABSENCE OF POPULAR SUPPORT
Yesterday marked another low for Uhuru Kenyatta: never in our 54-year-old history have so few attended the country’s most important nationwide celebration.
In some counties, including in a number of Uhuru’s strongholds, there were literally no crowds, only invited guests, journalists and policemen. There have been contested national day celebrations in Kenya before but never has there been such a massive washout against a President.It is clear that the issue of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s legitimacy will not go away anytime soon. At the heart of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s claimed legitimacy is the widely-circulated argument that the Supreme Court in September only found flaws in the electoral process, but not in the numbers of those who voted him, which IEBC put at 8.2 million. This claim is of course profoundly contradicted by the Court’s actual judgement and IEBC’s refusal to obey the Court’s order to provide access to the server.But the hollowness of that legitimacy claim was sorely tested yesterday for the second time, when Kenyans were treated to the astonishing spectacle of a President speaking to a virtually empty Jamhuri Day Kasarani stadium.
“A largely empty stadium” greeted the President, said one major daily; the other reported “Only a small section of the 60,000-seater was occupied.” Imagine the size of the crowd if Governor Waititu had not canceled his populous Kiambu County’s celebration, to allow supporters to go hear Uhuru in nearby Kasarani.Yesterday was a repeat of the paltry turnout for Uhuru in the 26 October second election, when very few of the original “8.2 million” turned out in response to a NASA call to boycott that election. Yesterday, there was no NASA call to boycott, but Kenyans still did not bother to show up, even more strongly than on 26 October!Can one imagine the dramatically contrasting images of the massive crowds at Raila Odinga’s planned swearing-in if it had gone ahead yesterday? No wonder the Attorney General had to threaten treason and death sentences for all those who assisted in that event. Those threats of course had nothing to do with the postponement, and were intended to deter attendance.We know, NASA supporters cannot be intimidated and would have attended in their hundreds of thousands. But we can be sure that the government would have used all out force to prevent them gathering for the event. There could have been a blood bath.Uhuru’s inauguration in front of some African heads of state had seen Kasarani stadium packed, and this was portrayed as reflecting his popular support. But we know that hundreds of buses had ferried in paid supporters in chartered buses from various part of the country, the Rift Valley in particular, and course from Central as well.Salim Lone, Adviser,NASA flagbearer Raila Odinga"