BBI Is Just A Dream Deferred,One Day,Someday, It Will Happen. – President Kenyatta

NAIROBI,Kenyatta, Dec, 13 – Discussions on the Constitution of Kenya amendment bill 2020 popularly referred to as the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) simply will not just fade away, with president Uhuru Kenyatta during this year’s Jamhuri Day celebrations saying that despite encountering legal obstacles, constitutional change is still imminent.

“I can only say that BBI is just a dream deferred. One day, someday, it will happen, because the country cannot survive ethnic majoritarianism and exclusion just as it cannot survive unfair and skewed representation. This is a design defect that we must fix,” said Kenyatta

Back in August, the Court of Appeal upheld the judgment of the High Court which declared the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) as irregular, illegal and unconstitutional.

The bill which sought to institute fundamental changes to the country’s constitution saw the president of the appellate court, Justice Daniel Musinga in part while issuing his orders also said, “the constitution of Kenya amendment Bill 2020 is unconstitutional and a usurpation of the people’s exercise of sovereign power.”

Kenyatta however in his address at the newly revamped Uhuru Gardens just like he did during the state of the nation address at Parliament buildings in November, said that Kenya must remedy the challenges it faces by enhancing political stabilisation and equal representation in leadership positions through an amendment of the constitution.

“And when the former Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Raila Odinga and I shook hands on March 8th, 2018, it was because we saw a crack on the wall of our nation. We had run two elections that costed the country KSh. 1 trillion in business loses and we were staring at a nation divided right in the middle,” said Kenyatta who further insisted that, “Because we had disagreed respectfully, we knew that this was a mark of progress. It was difficult, but the necessity, the reason and the recognition that we as Kenyans needed each other, nation before self, as our forefathers had taught us to come together, reinforced our resolve. Therefore, the need to come together and mend the crack on the wall of our nation necessitated the first amendment to our Constitution.”

The president symbolically likened Kenya to a house saying that there was no place for, ‘one-manism’ and that a collective effort involving all ambled Kenyans for imperative for nation building and reconciliation amidst disagreements.

“In December 1991, we discovered that the one-party system was a design error in our nationhood. And the advancement of the Republic had outlived its usefulness. We made renovations and changed the system,”

“In 2007, we ran into another architectural defect in our nation building project. We discovered that the politics of exclusion in which the ‘winner takes it all’ was not good for our country. We were bold enough to change the Constitution and expand the executive in order to accommodate the excluded,”

The Supreme Court is set to hear and rule on a number of issues revolving around the initiative next year.