• Manyora said an expansion of bipartisan dialogue will help to deal with the multitude of issues being experienced in the country.
• He said calls for dialogue by President William Ruto and Azimio leader Raila Odinga were necessary to save the country from anarchy.
Image: FILE
Political analyst Herman Manyora has called on the Kenya Kwanza government to expand the framework of the proposed bipartisan talks.
Manyora said there are a lot of issues that led to the mass protests therefore there needs to be an expansion of the bipartisan dialogue in order to cover the multitude of issues being experienced in the country.
“What Raila is seeming to suggest is there’s little we can do in parliament. What we need is to sit down as Kenyans and look at the challenges facing this country and indeed there are many challenges,” Manyora said on K24 on Tuesday.
“We need to have a forum in which we sit down. Parliament is too small, that bipartisan must be expanded to be multi-partisan.”
He said that directives on issues concerning dialogue made by President William Ruto and Azimio leader Raila Odinga were crucial in redirecting the country from the dark path it was headed to.
“This country was going into anarchy. Perhaps we would not be seated here if there was no ceasefire,” he said.
Manyora highlighted that statements on previous handshakes or any future talks on such should not be discredited by politicians and that any talks on such should be done with a clear state of mind.
“To demonize Raila for engaging Kibaki is completely to be unfair to yourself and to your country. That engagement was necessary to save the country,” he said.
Manyora’s remarks come in support of Raila who on Tuesday said the bipartisan talks proposed by President William Ruto being purely Parliamentary may not fully achieve the intended objectives.
"It is the resolution of this meeting that a purely Parliamentary process will not serve the intended end, our suggestion is to have a conversation at the national level through a process akin to the 2008 National Accord," the statement reads in part.
Azimio said the resolve came after holding deliberations following Sunday's truce between Raila Odinga and President Ruto.
"We are going to have Members of Parliament in it but they are going to sit outside Parliament, they will negotiate and only take the final product to Parliament as an accord which will then be passed by Parliament.
"We don't want it to be taken then be encumbered with the rules of Parliament," Raila said on Tuesday.