By Wahome Thuku

NAIROBI, KENYA: The controversial March 4 Movement (m4m) now says it’s not pushing for a Parliamentary system of government.

The lobby group coordinator Okiya Omtatah Okoiti said the M4M was also not part of the initiative popularised by the Cord Alliance for a constitutional amendment to replace the presidential with the parliamentary system.

In a statement issued to The Standard, Omtatah said the movement had been misunderstood on its agenda and was in support of a Presidential system.

“The M4M maintains that the people must be given a choice of electing their president directly,” he said.

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The political activist said they were proposing a system where voters would elect the presidential candidates but the votes are tallied at the country and not at the national level. Each constituency would be allocated one point and three other points for a Senator, a women representative and a Governor.

“Whichever presidential candidate gets the highest number of votes in a county would take all the points for the constituencies in that county as well as the three for the Senator, governor and women’s representative,” he added, “The aggregate of the points garnered by the candidate would determine the winner,”

The Cord Alliance is pushing for a Parliamentary system in which MPs elect the president. The alliance leader Raila Odinga and other luminaries have started their campaigns to popularise the proposal and to collect the one million signatures needed to force an amendment or a referendum.

However Omtatah said the M4M does not support the election of a president by a vote in Parliament as that would affect the principle of separation of powers as well as compromise the independence of the president from the legislature.

He said the movement was independently raising a million signatures to initiate an amendment to Article 138 of the constitution to create an “all-inclusive presidential electoral system”.

The statement was also signed by the group steering committee member Fred Oduke.