Kenya: Some poll candidates grabbing land-Rights groups

(SomaliNet) Some candidates in Kenya’s national election due next week have been accused by two Kenyan rights groups of land-grabbing and urged voters on Wednesday to scrutinise them closely.

According to a report by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) and the Kenya Land Alliance, protected areas and land belonging to state-owned companies worth $550-million were illegally given away since around 1961.

The report named fifteen parliamentary aspirants as having acquired land illicitly.

\"Ours is basically to ask that we vote wisely,\" Odenda Lumumba of the Kenya Land Alliance told a news conference.

\"Even if they are elected, we still have a battle to ensure that they are not again appointed as ministers, because one of them could easily land at the Ministry of Lands.\"

A 2004 report commissioned by President Mwai Kibaki found that top politicians, including Kenya\'s first two presidents, grabbed huge tracts of public land for political patronage and recommended that they be tried and the land returned.

Action has yet to be taken.

Among those cited in Wednesday\'s report were Defence Minister Njenga Karume and a firm belonging to the family of opposition presidential candidate Raila Odinga that is said to have bought land for a molasses plant at about a tenth of its value.

Karume, a close Kibaki ally, is said to have acquired 1 000 acres of land at about 2 600 shillings an acre, then sold it back to the government at about 186 000 shillings per acre.

Karume was not immediately available for comment.

\"We have a problem if our political class cannot even acknowledge that they got things illegally, irregularly,\" KNCHR chairman Maina Kiai said.

\"The best way to move forward is for them to come forward and say: \'We are sorry, we regret it, we\'ll pay the market value, then we can begin the process of reconciliation.\"

Odinga has proposed setting up a truth, justice, reconciliation and restitution commission to probe past economic crimes if he is elected.

On Wednesday he said he and other members of his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party had agreed to subject themselves to scrutiny by the proposed commission.

\"I, myself, have been mentioned (regarding) the so-called molasses plant, which was of course very unfair to me, but I want an opportunity to clear my name (before the proposed commission),\" he said during a televised debate.

Kenyans vote on December 27 in what is likely to be the East African country\'s tightest contest in 44 years of independence.

Many say the closeness of the race shows how democracy has advanced since independence from Britain in 1963, but others worry that it heightens the potential for fraud and violence in a campaign marred by chaos and vote buying allegations.

Newspapers reported on Wednesday that one man, an aide to a parliamentary aspirant, was killed and four cars torched in election violence in different parts of western Kenya.-Reuters