Chief Justice Martha Koome has ruled that public engagement was improperly handled during the second schedule of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) process.
However, Koome highlighted in her judgment that there was a reasonable public engagement during the BBI (1), but that this was not duplicated in subsequent revisions to the BBI (2), which suggested the creation of 70 new constituencies, which she deemed illegal.
“The transmission of the BBI Bill to the bicameral Parliament and the County Assemblies is evidence of public participation.
There was reasonable public participation for the BBI bill except for the second schedule which was a late amendment,” she stated.
Koome declared the Bill unconstitutional due to a lack of public engagement and a failure to meet Act 257’s standards for the popular initiative.
“The 2nd schedule of the amendment bill is unconstitutional, for lack of reasonable public participation,” she ruled.
On the matter of Public Participation, the Chief Justice argued that this was met as the proposals in the BBI were approved by 45 of the 47 counties.
However, she issued an advisory to the National Assembly regarding the regulation of public participation.
CJ Koome pointed out that there was no legal framework in place to guide how public engagement should be handled, and she requested that lawmakers write legislation to address the issue.
Koome also decided that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) was lawfully established at the time of the BBI and that the IEBC did not commit any errors in authenticating the signatures collected by the BBI secretariat.
In the case of the multiple-question referendum, the Chief Justice concluded that making such a conclusion was premature because the referendum had not yet begun.