Sunday, August 22, 2021 – COTU Secretary-General, Francis Atwoli, who was a key proponent of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), has finally spoken after the Court of Appeal threw out the BBI Appeal.
In a statement, Atwoli ate a humble pie and accepted the court’s verdict that declared BBI as illegal, unconstitutional, null and void although with a pinch of salt.
“At this point let me state that as a respecter of the law and our courts I abide by this decision although I still believe BBI was good for the country,” stated Atwoli.
At the same time, the COTU boss admonished Deputy President William Ruto for opposing BBI when he advocated for constitutional changes to address the issue of winner-takes-all and inclusivity which BBI was seeking to address.
He recalled the events of February 8th, 2019, when Ruto, while delivering a keynote speech in London at Chatham, acknowledged the fact that even though the 2010 Constitution had birthed political and economic change in the country, Kenyans in their numbers still had serious concern on, what he termed as, the fundamental normative architecture of the constitution.
And true to his observation, the DP went further and took great issue with how the Constitution structured the executive and dealt with the opposition.
He argued that the current formulation undermines executive accountability and saddles our democracy with a headless, incoherent, and dysfunctional opposition.
The constitution neither recognizes nor creates the functions of the official opposition.
According to the DP, it is not proper that the leader of a party gathering the second highest votes has no formal constitutional role and called for the change of the Constitution to introduce a position of official Opposition leader in the National Assembly.
But to Atwoli’s surprise, it is the same Ruto who has admonished the same proposal as contained in the BBI.
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