By C. Bryson Hull 1 hour, 54 minutes ago
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Fallout from a police raid on a major media group put Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki's weakened government further on the defensive on Friday, with newspapers denouncing the action as "state thuggery."
Thursday's heavy-handed raid sparked a storm of domestic and foreign condemnation and split Kibaki's cabinet, heaping more pressure on his administration.
The operation was particularly harmful to Kibaki's image because he was elected in 2002 on a promise to usher in reform after the autocratic rule of President Daniel arap Moi.
Kibaki was already in deep trouble over graft scandals that have forced three of his ministers to resign and angered Western donors. He is also still smarting from a humiliating defeat last November in a constitutional referendum.
In the most aggressive assault on mainstream media since independence in 1963, at least 30 elite police and paramilitary commandos stormed the offices of the Kenya Television Network (KTN) and the presses of its sister newspaper the Standard.
Thousands of newspapers were burned during the raids. The paper reopened on Thursday and produced a special edition. KTN was also back on the air on Thursday.
About half of Kibaki's cabinet protested against the raid, while other ministers defended it.
"This is completely a betrayal of the people who elected this government," said Ludeki Chweya, a political science lecturer at the University of Nairobi.
"The action was so drastic that nothing in the Moi era is comparable. So it takes the country so far back."
Kibaki on Friday ordered a new session of parliament on March 21 after he closed down the assembly following the referendum. He also appointed a committee to work on a new constitution -- a demand of many Kenyans.
"LAUGHABLE FICTION"
Kenyan media united against him.
"There are few dictators, even in past years, who were capable of the actions carried out by the Kibaki administration in the past 24 hours," Kenya's biggest newspaper, the Nation, said in an editorial.
Moi's government enacted tough press laws and routinely arrested and beat journalists who wrote critical articles.
The Standard in an editorial called the police justification -- that they had evidence of a plot to bribe reporters to write articles fomenting ethnic hatred -- "a piece of laughable fiction that even they know is complete nonsense."
"State Thuggery" proclaimed the front page of the Kenya Times newspaper.
The Standard wrote to the police on Friday demanding an inventory of items taken from its office, and identity of those who entered. "We are concerned there could be attempts to manipulate the contents in our CPUs (computers) as no attempt was made to jointly verify the same," its letter added.
The Kenyan media have angered the government not only with hard-hitting exposes of corruption but with stories about political intrigue and about Kibaki's wife.
First lady Lucy Kibaki last year harangued reporters in the Nation newsroom for hours and slapped a television cameraman over a story. And last week police held staff from the Weekly Citizen newspaper over a story alleging a feud between Lucy Kibaki and another woman many call the president's second wife.
Several reporters, mostly from sex and scandal tabloids, have been arrested and charged with press crimes.
The government had said it would crack down on journalists who make up stories or engage in extortion by threatening to publish damaging material. But the assault on a respected mainstream media group shocked many Kenyans.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne)
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