AIC church rejects draft Constitution

By RAMADHAN RAJAB

The Africa Inland Church-Kenya (AIC) will advice its faithful to reject the proposed Draft Constitution.

In a meeting attended by the 15 bishops at AIC Milimani today, the bishops said the draft constitution had been ‘poisoned’ and they could not allow their faithful to ‘swallow’ it in the current form.

The church’s opposition adds to the list the number of religious bodies that have threatened to lobby their followers to shoot down the proposed constitution at referendum later in the year. Attorney- General Amos Wako has already received the draft from Parliament for final editing before handing it to Interim Independent Electoral Commission for the referendum.

The AIC church cited the Kadhi courts and abortion clauses as unacceptable.

Rev Silas Yego, AIC Presiding Bishop, said that Committee of Experts (CoE) did not listen to the church on the contentious issues.

"The Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) still went on to ratify the draft constitutions with the sticky issues that we wanted changed which later was endorsed by Parliament. We were reviewing the constitution to knock out such issues and they failed. That is why we are going to advice our members to vote against it," Yego said.

He said those accusing the church of being insincere " can’t force the church to take in what is not morally right."

Some politicians have termed the Christians stand as insincere.

"Politicians will not dictate to us, we will not bend to their bashings unless they change the abortion clauses and delete the Kadhi’s courts before referendum," Yego said.

The Catholic church led by its head John Cardinal Njue and the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) have vowed to champion for No-vote come referendum if the contentious issues are not amended.