• He said that they shall move to Supreme Court and if they don’t make it, they will start the process afresh.
• Cotu boss says the High Court ruling had nothing to do with BBI and was just political.
Image: FILE
If we don’t have BBI before Elections, we will push for the polls to be postponed by one year, Cotu Secretary General Francis Atwoli has said.
“BBI will be there if there will be no BBI then we will make sure we have it before going to the elections,” he said.
“If there's is no BBI we will postpone elections. It will not be the leaders.. it is us who got problems. No BBI no election and that I can tell you for free.”
Speaking to the press on Thursday, Atwoli said Kenyans don’t want to die after every five years.
“Workers are the people who proposed revisiting the Constitution in 2017 but we wait on the courts. The ruling that was made had nothing to do with BBI it was just political and was central to the office of the presidency,” he said.
He said that they shall move to Supreme Court and if they don’t make it, they will start the process afresh.
“And we would ask the parliamentarians to extend the elections by one year until we get BBI,” he said.
According to the Constitution, 1) The President shall be elected by registered voters in a national election conducted in accordance with this Constitution and any Act of Parliament regulating presidential elections. (2) An election of the President shall be held--
(a) on the same day as a general election of Members of Parliament, being the second Tuesday in August, in every fifth year; or (b) in the circumstances contemplated in Article 146.
Last week, The Service Party leader Mwangi Kiunjuri said no amount of confusion in the country will force Kenya to postpone the 2022 general elections.
Kiunjuri said some leaders were coming up with issues meant to put the country in a confused state so that they get an excuse to postpone the next general elections scheduled for August 9, 2022.
He said Kenyans won’t allow the elections to be postponed and the Constitution must be respected by all saying they praying for peace in Kenya.
Five High Court Judges Joel Ngugi, George Odunga, Jairus Ngaah, Teresia Matheka, and Chacha Mwita termed the Constitutional Amendment Bill 2020 unconstitutional.
They said amendments cannot be made to the basic foundation structure of the Constitution.
The judges had unanimously ruled that President Uhuru Kenyatta does not have powers to initiate constitutional amendment under the law, only Parliament and the people have that power.
The BBI Bill cannot be subjected to referendum due to lack of public participation and because IEBC does not have a quorum, the judges said.
They restrained IEBC from undertaking any process in respect of the BBI Bill.
The upshot is that the text structure, history, and context all read and interpreted decreed by Constitution is that basic structure doctrine is applicable in Kenya.
The 18 chapters which form the basic structure of the Constitution outlines a system of governance Kenyans chose. It includes also important areas such as land and environment, national security, and public finance.