KENYAN opposition leader Raila Odinga rejected US calls to abandon his mock presidential inauguration, arguing that he does not recognise the legitimacy of Uhuru Kenyatta as president.

On Wednesday, the US embassy in Nairobi called next Tuesday’s planned ceremony “extra-constitutional.”

But Mr Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), which opposes Mr Kenyatta’s re-election, said it would proceed with next week’s protest event regardless.

Mr Odinga spoke yesterday outside a mortuary in the capital, where ODM supporters came to collect bodies of their relatives killed in protests.

He accused Kenya’s security forces of killing dozens of people during months of protests against two fraudulent elections.

“Nobody is talking about it,” he said. “Yet they have the audacity to come and advise us to forget and move on.”

And yesterday Attorney General Githu Muigai said Mr Odinga’s swearing-in would be considered treason.

He warned that bodies such as the “People's Assembly” called by Mr Odinga recently are unconstitutional and illegal and “may be visited by the full force of the law.”

The ODM boycotted October’s presidential election, called after the Supreme Court annulled August’s election, in which Jubilee party candidate Uhuru Kenyatta was named the winner.

A bid to postpone the second election after the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission admitted it could not guarantee its integrity failed after the Supreme Court failed to meet a quorum of judges.

The two judges who voted against the first annulment stayed away and the deputy head of the court failed to show after her police driver was shot and wounded.

Mr Kenyatta was later declared the victor of the October election, with 99 per cent of the vote, and sworn in last week.