Azimio La Umoja One Kenya leader Raila Odinga is set to reintroduce the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) Constitutional review in January 2023.
In an interview with Citizen TV on Tuesday, Raila said that the planned review will be broad and participatory.
“We are going to initiate a constitutional review which is going to be participatory. We’re going to come up with a constituent assembly that is going to do a review. This constitution is now 12 years old, (and) it now requires a review because now we know where the shoe is pinching as a people but we’re not going to do it at the behest of Kenya Kwanza administration,” Mr Odinga said.
“We are not going to be enticed because I am going to be given an office in Parliament. I have had an office as a Prime Minister. It is nothing so exciting to me and we cannot be bribed to circumvent the constitutional provisions just to satisfy certain interests.”
Read: Raila Odinga’s Campaign Lead Lands Top University Job
According to Raila, the proposed review will capture all the issues that were left out in the BBI which he jointly pushed with former President Uhuru Kenyatta.
“We had come up with a BBI, (in) which Kenyans participated and expressed themselves. We came up with a very comprehensive piece of legislation but it was opposed by these very same people. Remember we’d expanded the Executive—we had (the) Office of the Prime Minister, two deputies; we had also an Ombudsman for the Judiciary. There was also (the) position of the Leader of Opposition. They opposed it at that time and now they are coming back and they want to introduce it through the backdoor. We had said we wanted Cabinet Secretaries to be MPs so that they could answer questions; we’re actually going back to the hybrid system of governance,” said Mr Odinga.
Raila also faulted the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) for allegedly letting down Kenyans during the August polls, but tampering with the election integrity.
“The process was fairly smooth, people turned up and voted. The only hitch was actually to do with the presidential elections and this was only messed up at the tallying centre. For the first time, Kenyans saw (an) electoral commission that was divided, not in the middle, it was four out of seven Commissioners [who] disputed the results, (and) three approved those results, meaning that the majority of the Commissioners said those results were not a reflection of how Kenyans had voted,” he said.
The Azimio supremo is now demanding an audit of the August General Election results to help build confidence among Kenyans to participate again in the democratic exercise come 2027 while noting that IEBC chairperson Wafula Chebukati needs to be charged and locked behind bars.
Email your news TIPS to editor@thesharpdaily.com
