President Uhuru Kenyatta has set the record straight that the 2022 General Election will be held as planned despite the fact that the Court of Appeal poked holes in the composition of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).
Speaking in a televised interview at State House on Monday, August 23, Kenyatta assured Kenyans that he will not extend his term even with a single day.
“I am ready for an election under prescribed times (August 9, 2022). I have said several times and that is the schedule I am working with,” Uhuru said.
The Head of State further cast doubts on the preparedness of the polls citing Friday’s landmark ruling made by a seven-judge bench headed by Justice Daniel Musinga that IEBC lacked the quorum to conduct the referendum as proposed in the Building Bridges Initiative.
“However, going by what the court ruled about the BBI, they are essentially telling us: ‘We can’t have a General Election because we don’t have a fully constituted IEBC’. I wouldn’t want to comment on that postponement of elections,” he said.
Two weeks ago, former nominated Senator Paul Njoroge wrote to IEBC demanding the commission push the election date from August 9, 2022, to August 2023, to allow President Uhuru Kenyatta to serve his constitutional term fully.
Njoroge argued that if the country holds the next General Election as planned, then the Head of State will not have served his five-year term in accordance with Kenya’s 2010 Constitution.
“If elections are to be conducted on August 9, 2022, as you have indicated, it means that the current president shall have been denied over four months of his term, which is unconstitutional,” Njoroge said.
According to the 2010 Kenyan Constitution, the General Election is supposed to be held on the second Tuesday of August every fifth year after a previous election.
According to the vocal senator, President Uhuru Kenyatta took his oath of office on November 28, 2017 thus his term should therefore lapse on November 27, 2022.
