Belgut Member of Parliament Nelson Koech has said that the government will treat the upcoming anti-government protests scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as domestic terrorism.
The lawmaker, speaking on Citizen TV, reiterated that the protests are violent and unlawful therefore the government will maximize all resources to protect the country.
“We shall protect our country, our people, our property and our democracy. What the President and the CS are simply saying is that there have been no peaceful protests as envisaged in Article 37 of our constitution, what we’ve had is domestic terrorism and we will treat it as such this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday,” Koech narrated.
“Every child of this country should feel comfortable to go to school, what we saw last week were criminals going to hide in the classrooms and in the process children are tear-gassed, that will not be allowed this Wednesday,” he opined, citing that criminals take advantage of protests to commit crimes.
Koech further noted that the protests are not people-oriented, but instead, leader-initiated.
“We cannot allow our country to sink in the protests of Maandamo because of selfish leaders, who told Raila Odinga that this country starts and stops with him? Why is it always about Raila Odinga? What we are witnessing is not a people-initiated demonstration this is leaders-initiated demonstrations,” he said.
He further posed, “Why are there no demonstrations today, why were there no demonstrations yesterday, until Raila Odinga says we are having demonstrations?”
Citing the government pledge to counter the protests, Koech urged business people to protect their properties in whichever means they could as police are over-stretched.
The MP further added that the government will only allow peaceful demonstrations and any violent protests detected will be assumed as an act of terrorism and security agencies will be triggered to counter.
“Domestic terrorism is exactly what these people are perpetuating. These are not Maandamanos, these are terrorists and must be dealt with like we are dealing with terrorists, and this is opposition extremism.”
