Simama, Eugene Wamalwa and the rights of free speech and association

A large public meeting has been called in Bungoma this Sunday, the 31st of January. The rally has been called by Saboti MP Eugene Wamalwa and his confederates in the Simama Kenya political action group. It is not clear that the event will go ahead, following threats, made in public by local politicians, to stop the rally taking place.

These threats are the sort of, 'come if you dare' challenges that history promises will deliver great bloodshed and destruction of property. It is a naked effort at political incitement and intimidation, an attempt at corralling sections of the country off of what are deemed ‘external influences,' an effort at the kind of ethnic balkanisation that has led to the exclusion of certain ethnicities from national political groupings and led to the exclusion and resentments that bore the pre and post-election violence in 2008.