By Joy Kyalo
The Head of State Uhuru Kenyatta has noted that Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) proposals are the First Amendment to the 2010 Constitution.
He said that the process is aimed at strengthening Kenya’s constitutional order.
“BBI proposes amendments to our Constitution to give Kenyans hope for a better nation. It seeks to align the Spirit of our nation with the Letter of our Constitution so that obedience to the Letter of the Constitution is driven by hope and not fear. BBI intends to complete what we started when we adopted the 2010 Constitution and promised to change it later,” he said.
According to the president, BBI is not a ‘one-size-fit-all’ that promises to settle all the constitutional questions through a singular amendment. It is a starting point to a continuous process of constitution-making for our young nation.
“Even our Founding Fathers had to freeze certain thorny questions at independence, in the hope that subsequent constitution-making processes would resolve them. Their logic then and my rationale today is that, a constitution is a living document; it cannot be rigid. And, to build our nationhood, we must embrace the ideal of a continuous process of constitution-making,” he noted.
He added that BBI will not resolve all our constitutional grievances of the day since it is just a First Amendment to the 2010 Constitution.
BBI only attempts to make the 2010 Constitution better. And as we improve on it, we must remember that there will be a Second Amendment, a Third Amendment and many more as our young nation continues to grow.
He adviced Kenyans to be guided by the Spirit of the First Amendment to the 2010 Constitution as we debate the BBI proposals.
It is a discerning spirit that seeks to align our national aspirations with the Letter of the Constitution since the Spirit of the First Amendment is also a spirit of inclusion, co-creation and justice.
“On the spirit of inclusion, it does not augur well for our nationhood to have two occupants at the apex of the Executive in the persons of the President and Deputy President. More so, in an ethnically diverse nation as ours, this creates an environment of ‘political exclusion’ resulting in the cyclic violence we have witnessed in every election,” he said.
In addition, he said that if we increase the positions at the apex of our Executive from two to five by introducing a Prime Minister and two Deputies, more communities will be accommodated at the apex since that was the Kofi Annan Consensus of February 2008 that gave us peace.
Kenyatta agreed that the five positions at the apex of the Executive means that some people will be left out hence BBI has proposed to re-introduce the position of Leader of Official Opposition, that was so successful under the former constitutional order.
“If the opposition carries a large portion of the country and the winner in an election carries another, isn’t there a compelling national interest in giving official recognition to the opposition leader and supporting his office to form a shadow cabinet?” he asked.
He concluded that an expanded Executive and constitutional recognition of the opposition will reduce the notion of ‘political scarcity’ and the propensity for electoral violence every five years.
Similarly, it will enhance the doctrine of a constitution of hope over a constitution of fear.
