National Super Alliance (NASA) leader Raila Odinga has told his supporters to boycott Safaricom, Bidco and Brookside Dairies products for allegedly supporting the Jubilee administration.
NASA had on Tuesday outlined economic boycotts, peaceful processions picketing and other legitimate protests as part of its national resistance campaign following the declaration of President Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner of the fresh presidential election, which Raila boycotted.
The Opposition formation is demanding comprehensive reforms to level the playing field and a fresh election in 90 days and has launched a National Resistance Movement (NRM) wing to lead the agitation.
NASA MPs, who convened a press conference at Okoa Kenya headquarters, said the companies’ goods and services and the marketing process are used to benefit people who have the “blood of Kenyans on their hands.”
“We’re calling for a boycott that will hurt, a boycott that will be painful, a boycott that will bring these corporations to their knees and to their senses until they stand up for electoral justice expressed through free, fair and credible elections,” they said.
The MPs, who read the statement in turns, accused Safaricom of playing a role in the rigging of the August 8 presidential election by failing to route results from polling station to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) public portal and instead sending them to France in connivance with OT-Morpho.
“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. It has since come to our knowledge that one of these VPNs terminated at a cloud server registered in Spain but operated from France under the control of OT Morpho. Consequently, results from the polling station KIEMS kits left the country but never found their way back to IEBC,” the said.
“None of the kits under Safaricom’s network ever got their results onto the IEBC’s public web portal. Furthermore, when purported results started streaming onto the portal without accompanying forms 34A/B, Safaricom’s senior management knew that these results did not come from the KIEMS kits. The company chose to do nothing,” the NASA statement added.
“Moreover, between July 25th and July 27th, the period immediately prior to the disappearance of Acting IEBC ICT Director, Chris Msando, hundreds of KIEMS kits were stolen from the IEBC. The same stolen KIEMS kits were allowed to continue operating on the Safaricom network even though the company’s management knew those kits were not under the control of the IEBC. Safaricom has the blood of Kenyans like Chris Msando in its hands. It has to pay for it,” the MPs added.
Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore has previously denied the claims, saying all results from regions it was assigned to cover are public available.
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“The boycott of Brookside Dairies, like BIDCO Industries, provide goods and services supplied by people with the blood of Kenyans on their hands. They provide goods and services supplied by people who support those with the blood of Kenyans on their hands. Their goods, services and market proceeds are used to support people who have the blood of Kenyans on their hands. And, like Safaricom, they have presided over economic regimes that impoverish rather than empower Kenyans,” said NASA.
The legislators, who included ODM chairman John Mbadi (Suba South), Suna East’s Junet Mohamed, Nairobi Women Representative Esther Passaris, Mbita MP Millie Odhiambo, Homabay Woman Representative Gladys Wanga, Busia’s Florence Mutua and Ugunja MP Opiyo Wandayi, accused the two milk processors of presiding over a market regime that has seen the price of milk skyrocket since 2013.
“When Jubilee took power, dairy farmers were being paid a maximum of Ksh 35 per litre. Consumers were paying Ksh 72 per litre (Ksh 36 per half litre packet). Today, farmers will be lucky to get Ksh 35 per litre yet consumers are paying Ksh 120 per kilo (Ksh 60 per half litre packet). The processors margin has increased almost threefold. These are the spoils of power our children are paying for with their lives. This economic exploitation is in addition to supporting political programs that have entrenched electoral autocracy and rigged elections,” the MPs charged.
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