Police fired teargas and water cannon yesterday to disperse hundreds of protesters demonstrating in Kenyan cities against an electoral body which opposition parties say is biased.
Police fired teargas at a convoy of vehicles carrying opposition leaders and supporters accompanying it on foot in the capital Nairobi.
A water cannon truck later forced the convoy out of the city centre, a Reuters witness said.
Police earlier fired tear gas at about 50 protesters as they tried to march on the offices of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) in the capital.
Earlier, police said they had arrested seven people in the port city of Mombasa.
About 300 protesters held placards reading “IEBC must go home now”.Businesses in the city stayed closed for fear of looting, but there were no initial reports of violence by demonstrators in either Mombasa or Nairobi.
Protests called by the opposition Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) are in their fourth week. Police have sometimes used tear gas and water cannon against stone-throwing protesters.
“The demonstrations are illegal and the organisers have been clearly warned.
If they insist on rioting, they will meet us there,” Lucas Ogara, Mombasa’s police chief, told Reuters.
Some protesters re-grouped after they had been dispersed, and were led by Mombasa County Governor Ali Hassan Joho to the local IEBC office where they handed over a petition peacefully.
Kenya’s next presidential and parliamentary polls are not due until August 2017.
But politicians are already trying to galvanise their supporters in a nation where violence erupted after the 2007 vote and the opposition disputed the outcome in 2013.
CORD, led by Raila Odinga who lost the 2013 vote and unsuccessfully challenged the result in court, has accused the IEBC of bias and said its members should quit.
IEBC officials have dismissed the charge and say they will stay.
The government has called on the opposition not to stage street protests against the IEBC.
CORD on Sunday vowed to keep up the protests in Nairobi and other regions.”Kenyans will be doing this, as we have done in the past, in exercise of their right to assemble peaceably and to direct the widest possible attention to a great national issue,” it said in the statement.
In western Kenya, local Citizen Television reported that Senator Bonny Khalwale was arrested by police as he led a demonstration in Kakamega town.