Interior Cabinet Secretary (CS), Fred Matiang'i on Monday, January 24, responded to complaints raised by the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) over chaos witnessed in their rallies.
This is after UDA, through its party Secretary-General Veronica Maina, wrote to President Uhuru Kenyatta raising concerns over laxity in dealing with chaos witnessed during a rally at the Jacaranda Grounds.
Speaking during a meeting with stakeholders in the security docket in Nairobi, the Interior boss confirmed that the ministry was aware of skirmishes witnessed during the campaigns.
However, he claimed that some of the pandemonium witnessed was self-inflicted by bad political decisions.
Matiang'i noted that the disorder was caused by false promises and bribes offered by the UDA politicians ahead of the campaigns.
"What is frustrating us is the behaviour of some of our political leaders. The endemic false promising that is happening around the country, failing young groups of people and sometimes mismanaging those organizations, and causing conflict among those people is the phenomenon we are seeing" the tough-talking CS stated.
The security boss advised politicians to refrain from such practices if they wanted to have peaceful rallies.
"If political leaders refrained from some of those criminal activities, then we would be having nothing to worry about," Matiang'i posed.
He added that the ministry was and will continue to work with a multi-agency team which includes officers from the National Intelligence Service and Office of the Director of Public Prosecution (ODPP).
The CS stated that more officers would be deployed in the rallies, but will not take part in quelling chaos caused by the politicians.
In UDA's letter to the president, the party headed by Deputy President William Ruto claimed that no action had been taken following the disruption witnessed during a political rally at the Embakasi rally.
"As a general rule, nothing has been done by the security agencies to prevent or arrest this egregious criminality. Without any form of accountability, the emboldened perpetrators continue to gloat over their deeds and threaten to unleash worse mayhem in future," read the letter in part.
