KENYA: Police fire teargas canisters to disperse opposition demonstration in the Kenya capital Nairobi..

Kenyan police on Tuesday (December 5) tear-gassed opposition leaders and backers protesting a government-approved change to the former ruling party's leadership, Reuters witnesses said. The violence in downtown Nairobi came after weeks of feverish political jockeying among Kenya's volatile party leaders before a presidential election due in late 2007 in east Africa's largest economy. The main opposition alliance -- the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) -- had called a march to the government registrar's office to complain that an ally of former president Daniel arap Moi was made head of the Kenya African National Union (KANU) with a pen stroke. The registrar last week approved Nicholas Biwott, formerly a powerful minister under Moi that many Kenyans still view with suspicion, as KANU boss -- usurping official opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta from the post. But following a government warning that such a march would be illegal, police on horseback, in trucks and on foot with dogs hit the crowd of hundreds with tear-gas and beat some with truncheons outside parliament, Reuters witnesses said. The opposition leaders ran into their parliamentary offices in an adjacent building to escape the advancing police and stinging white gas clouds. Police spokesman Gideon Kibunjah said the demonstration had not been cleared in advance as required by law, and anyone involved was subject to arrest and prosecution. Kenyatta's faction in KANU, Kenya's oldest political party which his father Jomo Kenyatta led as the first post-independence president, wants the party to stay in ODM -- which Biwott and Moi bitterly oppose.

ITN Source | December 5, 2006

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