Editor's Review

MCAs have alleged that the decision by the High Court to declare the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) illegal is an attempted coup on the president.

A convention comprising members drawn from the 47 County Assemblies in the country on May 16, 2021, castigated the High Court over the decision to declare the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) unconstitutional.

The MCAs claimed that the ruling by the five-judge bench was a direct violation of the sovereignty of the people, arguing that 43 county assemblies, the National Assembly and the Senate, passed the bill, thus making it a popular initiative.

The MCAs argued that the ruling by the High Court derails the development agenda set out for the country in the BBI bill.

“The judgment does not acknowledge that a Constitution is a living document that must be responsive to the needs and desires of a society at any given time. It presupposes that Kenyans are prisoners of the 2010 Constitution and the 2010 Constitution was made for a tiny minority of Kenyans and in this case the Judiciary and civil society groups not the larger majority of Kenyans.

"By holding that some sections of the Constitution cannot be amended whether by popular or parliamentary initiative or what they generally term as “eternity clauses”, the judges boldly and without any solid analysis took away the sovereign powers of the people enshrined in Article 1 (1)," a statement by the MCAs read in part.

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"This means that regardless of the social, political or economic issues that Kenyans face at any given time they cannot constitutionally change the constitution unless they then resort to anarchy either through a civilian or military coup!” They alleged.

The MCAs claimed that the court undermined President Kenyatta's constitutional right to promote national unity by declaring the BBI committee as illegal.

The lawmakers told the judiciary to stop robbing Kenyans of their direct sovereign powers and refrain from abusing the delegated indirect powers donated to them by the people.

They urged the BBI team to appeal the decision by the High Court and list the county assemblies as interested parties.

Further, the legislators alleged that such interpretation of the Constitution would easily land the country into a worse Post-Election Violence than 2007 and condemn Kenyans to eternal economic regression.

The MCAs also claimed that by throwing out the document, the Judiciary had cut off development to some parts of the country, noting that 35 per cent of revenue to counties would have transformed the lives of ordinary Kenyans massively.