Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto has said that the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) bill could have survived if the promoters of the bill listened to him.
Speaking on Thursday, August 26, at his Karen residence in Nairobi during a consultative meeting with grassroot leaders and opinion shapers from Nyeri, the second in command said the BBI bill would have received much support from across the board should they have considered the issues he raised.
Ruto maintained that he executed his mandate of advising the President on the shortcomings of BBI but his advice seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.
“My responsibility as the Deputy President is to advise the President, in accordance with our Constitution, as I see it. And I did my duty and informed him of the mistakes in BBI,
“It would have been a big mistake if I had not raised the issues yet I knew they were there,” he said.
A seven-judge bench of the Court of Appeal on Friday, August 20, upheld the High Court judgment finding the BBI process illegal, unconstitutional, null, and void in a decision set to shift the political landscape with a year before the country goes for General Election.
“The president does not have authority under the Constitution to initiate changes to the Constitution,” Court of Appeal President Daniel Musinga swhile reading the majority ruling.
Speaking on the judgment, the former Agriculture Minister said he is not to blame for the BBI debacle because the process did not take into account the opinions of the majority of Kenyans, including his.
“How can anybody hold it against me that I did not support BBI when I clearly stated my position on matters that are controversial and unconstitutional, yet the court has vindicated me that the document had constitutional challenges?” he posed.
According to Ruto, the BBI bill will as well not survive at the apex court after the BBI secretariat on Thursday, August 26, vowed to move to the Supreme Court to get the final ward.
“There are those who believe very strongly that BBI is pursuing a just cause and that is being resisted in the same way the push for a return to multipartyism and the struggle for a new Constitution among other landmark changes have been resisted in the past and that the promoters should proceed to the highest court of the land for a final word,” said former Dagoreti South MP Dennis Waweru.
