Debate BBI proposal without cynical sway

Several notable leaders have come out very strongly to oppose the push for a referendum and that is as it should be. However, the reasons given for taking this position are not convincing.

It is important to remember what occasioned the push for constitutional reforms and where we were as a nation. After the 2017 General Election, Kenya was so fragmented that a section of the citizenry was agitating for secession.

President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga swallowed their pride and came together to chart a path to reconciliation and unity.

It is against that background that the Building Bridges Initiative was born. It has taken two years of negotiating to get us where we are. This may not be sufficient time for a fully consultative process. Nonetheless, elections that come after every five years did not give Kenyans the luxury of negotiating lengthily on certain urgent matters that needed reforms before another election. So, it was important to initiate a process towards addressing these concerns.

BBI was mooted and unveiled before the coronavirus struck the globe. Granted, there are monumental challenges that have arisen as a result of the pandemic and this has happened all over the world.

The government may not have responded to these challenges satisfactorily and that ought to be strongly pointed out and measures taken to sort out the mess. Protective equipment for health workers, allowances, the welfare of the very vulnerable as a result of the pandemic and so on, must be tackled.

But we cannot put off everything that we envisaged to do as a country because we have been struck by the pandemic. Around us, we can see that people are moving on with their lives under the circumstances. Burundi had a General Election followed by Tanzania and now Uganda is at it.

The idea of postponing a political exercise such as the BBI can have an unpleasant outcome. When Prime Minister Abby of Ethiopia postponed elections, violence erupted in Tigray and now the situation is degenerating further in what could morph into a civil war if not contained forthwith.

When we quote Article One of the 2010 Constitution and say that we, the people are the custodians of power and that we donate it to the leaders, has it occurred to the citizenry that we are also prone to abuse of that very same power?

After the 2017 polls, the country was in a precarious situation and something had to be done to unify the country. It fell upon the citizenry and the leaders alike to craft a strategy towards achieving the objective of unity and reconciliation. Kenyatta and Odinga acted. Who else did? Do we have an alternative to what the two leaders proposed?

It means that we, the people abdicated our responsibility when we didn’t come up with a plan of how to rescue our country from collapse hence we may not have the moral authority to reject a proposal to solve a problem without giving an alternative of how to go about it.

There is this talk of BBI being pushed for the benefit of a few leaders at the top. Much as this assertion to some extent is accurate -- the benefit to the political leaders is inevitable in a political process of this kind -- especially when a succession is involved, are we going to sacrifice the peace and tranquillity of our nation just because some leaders will gain politically?

Besides, it is well known that President Uhuru Kenyatta is serving his last term and has unequivocally stated that he will retire, how is he going to individually benefit from this? Raila Odinga is yet to declare his candidacy for the 2022 presidential election. Why are we resorting to our own imaginative political calculations to dismiss the BBI proposal?

Granted, it would have been better for the BBI proposal to emerge from Parliament or directly from the people. Hence, as to whether it was constitutional to initiate the process -- it is not quite accurate to say that the process is illegal. At that time, somebody had to quickly come up with something and if the people didn’t, the leaders did and we are far much at a better place because of that.

Those calling for a fully consultative process ought to recognize that time constraints do not allow for that kind of undertaking. The most consultative document that Kenyans have ever come up with is the 2010 Constitution. And it took over two decades to negotiate. Are we saying that we undertake such an exercise for a Constitution that is just ten years old?

As we approach the referendum, the citizenry should carefully read the BBI document without being negatively influenced by political leaders who either have a score to settle with the initiators of the project or are just hell-bent on scuttling the process for the sake of maintaining the status quo.

- Mr Oketch is an author