By C. Bryson Hull
The decision came as a reversal after opposition leader Raila Odinga on Friday said his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) would take its fight off the streets and use other channels, including talks with African leaders and economic boycotts.
About 650 people have been killed since President Mwai Kibaki won a disputed Dec. 27 election, mostly in police action against banned protests and attacks on tribes seen as backing him. Human rights groups have decried both types of killing.
"We are resuming our peaceful public rallies on Thursday," Henry Kosgey, Orange Democratic Movement chairman, told reporters. "We will use all available means to bring down the Kibaki regime."
Odinga says Kibaki stole the closest-ever election in the east African nation from him. International observers say the count was so chaotic it was impossible to tell who won, and the government says the ODM also rigged votes.
The protests are a high-stakes tactic to pressure the government, already being threatened with aid cuts after images of police shooting and beating protesters drew widespread criticism. The government has rebuffed the threat.
But many Kenyans say ODM's strategy could backfire, as the protests have bred chaos that disrupted schools and closed businesses, and shown Odinga staying off the streets while his supporters face the might of government security services.
POLICE UNDER PRESSURE
Police commissioner Hussein Ali on Saturday said he was sending a team to investigate the police shooting of two unarmed protesters in the western city of Kisumu, captured in dramatic TV footage. The investigators' report is due on Feb. 1.
The video shows an officer shooting two young men from a group that had thrown stones, one of whom made faces at him. He then twice kicks one of the men, who tried to stand up. ODM called it "a cold-blooded execution."
The opposition and rights groups blame police for most of the killing during the protests, including the deaths of schoolchildren. The Daily Nation in a Saturday editorial called police conduct "simply horrific."
Police have said that they only shot rioters and looters, and maintain the demonstration ban is to prevent more mayhem, the likes of which engulfed opposition hotspots across the nation immediately after Kibaki was declared the winner.
In Narok town, paramilitaries guarded empty streets after hundreds of members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe armed with machetes had faced pro-opposition Maasais with bows and arrows.
A total of six people died on Friday as the two sides fought in the town, gateway to the Maasai Mara game park.
"The police are here ... but they are not enough. The Maasai came in a group of several hundred in broad daylight yesterday. They were using machetes to kill," fuel station owner Vinod Patel said.
Kenya's paroxysm of violence has seriously damaged its democratic reputation and harmed one of Africa's strongest economies.
Roughly 250,000 have been forced from their homes in ethnic attacks, the bulk of them in the pro-opposition Rift Valley. A policeman was killed there on Friday by an arrow, police said.
Paramilitaries in riot gear marched through downtown Nairobi on Saturday, in a sign that tension has not disappeared.
Nairobi's Mathare and Kibera slums were quiet, and in the opposition stronghold of Kisumu, scene of some of the worst police action and earlier rioting, was coming back to life.
"Shops are open, people have flocked into the streets but there is no money," vendor Silwa Opido, 42, said as she balanced a basket of bananas on her head. "People have nothing in their pockets because no one has worked since Kibaki stole the votes."
Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe told reporters 510 people had been killed since violence erupted around election day, and of those 87 died at police hands. He said 70 percent of deaths were in the Rift Valley.
Several African leaders are shuttling between Kibaki and Odinga's camps, and former U.N. head Kofi Annan is due to arrive on Tuesday to begin talks.
(Additional reporting by Nick Tattersall in Narok, Guled Mohamed in Kisumu)
SOURCE: Reuters, January 19, 2008