Counselor, Human Rights Activist and Former Secretary General of the Kenya Civil Servants Union Dr. Isaac Newton Kinity has weighed in on the ongoing debate over former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s claims on coup.
Dr. Kinity who is currently a Member of the Presidential Advisory Board of the Republican National Committee, USA says such sentiments were uncalled for and Raila Odinga take responsibility.
According to Kinity, Odinga should either reveal who were behind the coup attempt or be taken to court for false claims if it is untrue.
He added that so far, no one knows whether some KDF officers have already been killed in relation to these allegations or not.
The former Secretary Kenya Civil Servants Union argues that Raila’s claim is a very serious matter that touches on the welfare and the lives of the KDF employees and should not be taken lightly.
“The Kenyan law is very clear on crimes committed on the Kenyan soil. Any Kenyan who commits a crime should be accorded a fair trial in a court of law in Kenya. No one should be prosecuted and sentenced without a legal due process in a court of law,” he stated.
A few days ago, Raila Amolo Odinga confessed that he saved William Ruto from a military coup 8 months ago on June 25, 2024.
Kinity has questioned why it has taken Raila Odinga about 8 months to reveal the coup attempt.
He wondered where those KDF officers who were perceived to have been behind the coup are.
“Have they been killed already, or are they alive? If they are alive, where are they? It also sounds very strange and peculiar to note the silence of William Ruto over the matter,” he said.
According to Kinity, before Raila Amolo Odinga spoke out about the coup, he (Kinity) had wrote various articles about the meager monthly minimum pay for the KDF officers.
He also released an audio about the same sent all the articles and the audio messages to AFLCIO, ILO, ICFTU, PSI, IACC, Amnesty International, Transparency International, Human Rights Watch, and to other organizations and governments so that there would be an international intervention to help the KDF which is suffering without any representation in Kenya.
In his articles, Dr. Kinity compared the salaries of the KDF with the salaries of the armies in the neighboring countries to Kenya.
According to his research, the minimum monthly pay for the KDF is $55. The minimum monthly pay for the Tanzanian Army is $413, Burundi $178, and Rwanda $170.
He avers that the reasons why a report about the allegations of an attempted coup was made 8 months later raises the possibility that the Ruto administration has panicked over the comparison he made between the minimum salaries of the KDF employees and the minimum salaries of the armies of the neighboring countries to Kenya and therefore feared a reaction from the KDF employee’s forcing William Ruto to seek help from Raila Odinga in order to pre-empt any reaction from the KDF over the meager pay, and the only way they thought would help was scare the KDF employees from raising a finger over their meager pay was to fake a coup attempt to create the fear.
“Could the outcry of a none existence coup attempt be an intention to pre-empt any anger created in the KDF by the revelation of the minimum meager salaries paid to the KDF or would it be a scheme to scare the KDF from contemplating to help Kenyans from the quagmire of the uncontrolled corruption which is causing unbearable suffering to Kenyans,” stated Kinity.
Kinity argues that unless the minimum salary for the KDF is set to stand at Kshs. 50,000 per month, nothing will be easy for President Ruto from within the KDF.