Moses Kuria: I owe nobody any explanations over Facebook post

Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria says he owes nobody an explanation over his Facebook post about the slain electoral agency official Chris Msando. The controversial MP yesterday said social media users were not police officers and he would not bow to their pressure to explain circumstances under which he was tipped off about a vehicle found parked in Nairobi’s Roysambu Estate. On Monday, Mr Kuria found himself in a storm after he posted a picture of himself pointing at the vehicle belonging to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) ICT manager. “I owe nobody any explanations. The media and social media are not part of the police and I refuse to be dragged into this political circus. It will be an exercise in futility… what will happen after explaining myself to you?” posed Kuria in a phone interview with The Standard yesterday.

Kuria had claimed, in a post he has since pulled down, that Msando had been enjoying himself with a female companion before news of his killing broke. This angered Kenyans, who demanded he be probed on what he knew about the killing. The web Kuria has found himself is not very different from what the late Labour minister Peter Okondo found himself following the death of then outspoken Anglican Bishop Alexander Kipsang arap Muge.

Three days before his death, Okondo warned Muge he would not return home alive if he dared visit Western Kenya. The outspoken bishop took the challenge by travelling to Busia but did not make it back; he perished in a grisly road accident along the Eldoret-Turbo road on his way back. Just like in Kuria’s case, there was public outrage that forced the Kanu-era minister to resign on August 20, 1990, despite clarification that Okondo did not mean it when he issued the death threat to Muge. Kuria found himself in hot soup when demands started swirling that he should be investigated for the killing of Msando. Msando’s disappearance of Msando had taken a political angle, with Kuria’s opponents reaping reaping political capital from the matter. Kuria has in the past been linked to utterances that have seen him charged in court with hate speech.

Msando’s body was found in a thicket in Kiambu County. His captors are said to have tortured him before murdering him in an incidence that has seen fears of election violence rise. The body of an unidentified woman was also found in the same bush. The murders came just days to the next general election.

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