Azimio La Umoja One Kenya chief Raila Odinga has revealed that his team is planning to reintroduce the 'Building Bridges Initiative (BBI)', which he claims will be participatory and broad.
In an interview with Citizen TV on Tuesday evening, the former Prime Minister disclosed that his team, starting next month (January 2023), will kick off a Constitutional review which will capture all the issues that were left out in the BBI which he jointly pushed with former President Uhuru Kenyatta.
According to the ODM boss, President William Ruto's move to push for the establishment of the office of the Official Leader of Opposition is questionable after vehemently opposing the BBI which had a similar proposal, as well as the expansion of the Executive. He noted that the position cannot be created by Parliament and Kenyans must have a say in a referendum.
"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."
This comes after President Ruto in a memorandum to National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula and the Senate’s Amason Kingi recently asked Parliament to engage in a law reform which will address four issues: the gender rule, the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NGCDF), the position of the Leader of Official Opposition, and parliamentary oversight of the Executive.
Mr Wetang'ula has already directed various departmental committees to look at the proposals by the President and prepare a report, which will be tabled on the floor of the House when Parliament resumes in February 2023.
The collapse of the BBI had churned out big losers in key constituencies that were going to get most of the goodies in the constitutional push.
County governments, members of the county assemblies, the push for the two-thirds gender rule, youth, the Mt Kenya counties who were pushing for more constituencies, as well as Kenya’s 26 protected constituencies are some of the biggest losers following the flopping of the BBI.
While the Bill had proposed that counties get at least 35 per cent of national revenue, it also wanted wards considered the lowest level of planning for development and budgeting, giving more focus to the electoral units run by the 1,450 MCAs who were going to manage a proposed Ward Development Fund.
In Mt Kenya, the vote-rich region was to get a chunk of the proposed 70 additional constituencies, which means more money in terms of the National Government Constituencies Development Fund, while the youth were promised seven-year tax breaks, a four-year moratorium to pay back their student loans and the establishment of a Youth Commission.
And on Tuesday, the former premier accused the Head of State of doublespeak in pushing for Constitutional Amendment now while he had opposed BBI.
"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.
At the same time, he revisited the August General Election, accusing the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) of letting down Kenyans for not upholding the integrity of the polls.
According to Mr Odinga, the narrative that the Azimio team did not have agents in a number of polling stations across the country is a diversionary tactic. He insisted that his victory was tampered with at the National Tallying Center (NTC) at Bomas of Kenya, Nairobi.
"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.
"It is unfortunate that the Chairman of the Commission divided the Commission and then decided to unilaterally go ahead, gazette himself as the returning officer for the presidential elections, and declare results which he himself knew where he got them from...at the time he had disappeared, 29 Constituencies' results had not been announced and for two days, they had stopped the portal from public streaming," added the Azimio boss.
He is 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.
"We want an audit of these results so that Kenyans can have confidence come 2027 that they can go to the polls and cast their votes and that their votes will count. In my view, Mr Chebukati is a criminal who should be prosecuted and sentenced to jail. What he has committed is a great crime against humanity and the people of this country. I strongly believe that he (Mr Chebukati) and not the other four Commissioners should be in the dock," said Mr Odinga.
He added: "You need not have agents. Why should you have to pay agents in all 46,229 polling stations? It is a misnomer, it is something which should not happen. The Commission failed Kenyans and they have continued to fail Kenyans. The blame should be directed where it belongs. Our votes were stolen at the tallying centre not at the polling station. There was nothing wrong on our side. Our campaign was one of the best and the most organised campaign throughout."
The ODM honcho says that it is a big blow to the country's democratic space with the highest Court in the land upholding Dr Ruto's victory which he alleges was not a true reflection of Kenyans.
"It is a tragedy of justice and it was a much bigger tragedy when the Supreme Court confirmed that kind of blatant rigging of elections. I am not bitter because elections are not for Raila Odinga but for Kenyans. I believe that the Supreme Court was persuaded. You saw how the Supreme Court handled the matter so casually, the kind of language they used, the arrogance with which they dismissed our case," he said.
Mr Odinga also defended Mr Kenyatta saying that the former Head of State provided a conducive environment for all candidates for the August polls noting that there is no need for blame games of someone not delivering as well as Kenya Kwanza team should claim that the former President campaigned for him.
"Uhuru was not supposed to be campaigning for me. I am a politician in my own right and I am capable of campaigning and winning elections and he knows it. He did not use his position as the incumbent President to swing the results in my favour. He didn't use the security forces, he did not give instructions to the police, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), or (the) Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to support me in any way," he said.
"I got a lot of votes in Uhuru’s backyard and that is where most rigging was done. I want to thank the people of Central Kenya for voting for me the way they did. I am very grateful to them for doing that."
With reports that senior members of the Azimio campaign team visited the four beleaguered electoral officials at one of the posh establishments in Nairobi, Mr Odinga defended the visits saying his team was in protest of the results declared by Mr Chebukati and wanted to know “the truth'” of what was happening after the Serena presser.
“The politicians were justified to visit these commissioners because they were saying ‘No’. Our people were actually justified in finding out the truth because that was already ex post facto. The result had already been announced by Mr Chebukati. They wanted to know what actually transpired. They are making too much noise about it in the so-called tribunal,” said the former Prime Minister.
This comes after it was revealed at the Justice Aggrey Muchelule-led tribunal last week that Juliana Cherera, Irene Masit, Justus Nyang’aya and Francis Wanderi were visited by former CS Raphael Tuju, former Kanu Secretary General Nick Salat among others with Mr Odinga now terming the ongoing hearing as a 'charade'.
“That tribunal itself is illegal—the way it was constituted, the matter was rushed, and before the bill was even taken to Parliament, the so-called Victor who brought the bill had already condemned the four commissioners as people who had put the country in turmoil,” he said.
