BBI taskforce ignored the church - Evangelical leaders

 

A section of church leaders has hit out at the Building Bridges Initiative taskforce for ignoring concerns raised by the Church.

The leaders drawn from the evangelical ministries on Wednesday said it was unfortunate that despite having presented their memorandum to the taskforce, none of their concerns had been captured in the final draft.

Led by Bishop Mark Kariuki, the leaders said issues raised by the church in the 2010 Constitution have not been exhausted.

They said this is the reason they welcomed the BBI proposals hoping that they would tackle areas that had not been dealt with.

"We are all Kenyans and each one of us has a right to air their concerns. We presented our concerns in the 2010 Constitution but were ignored. We appeared before the BBI taskforce and presented our memorandum and up to today, it has been ignored," Kariuki said.

"We are of the view that the task force deliberately took the church for granted. But let it be made clear that as per the last census, we have a representation of 82 per cent and we have the ability and the capacity to rally ourselves to mobilise and have candidates who will carry the interests of the church in every constituency," he said.

According to the bishop, the BBI should strive to see all bridges are repaired including the churches.

"We appreciate the effort made by the two principals but everybody must be brought on board. Let us not act as if we are doing this for someone," he said.

Kariuki said if it means extending the term for the current government for the BBI to be debated it should be so because this will give enough time for everyone to participate and feel represented.

This, he said, will do away with unnecessary lobbying and creating the "them versus us" scenario.

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"If not, as a church we shall stand and declare we cannot take that direction," he said.

The clerics' sentiments comes a day after ODM leader said there is little likelihood that new ideas will be pushed into the BBI report.

It was reported that Raila had yielded to the growing calls by disgruntled groups and opened up the BBI report for amendments.

President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila initially announced that the window for amendments was closed despite many voices demanding changes. 

 But via a tweet on Tuesday, Raila said there is significantly little chance of significant new ideas being brought into the BBI document ahead of the referendum.

"...except for editorial work to make it explicit on demands by various groups where it sounds vague or general, as is the case with the issues of pastoralists," he said on Tuesday.

"It is basically done. However, there are groups that feel their views were not captured in the manner they were presented during the collection of views and those are the corrections we are promising to make."

The BBI proposals are set to be tabled in parliament for debate.

Deputy President William Ruto who is opposed to the BBI report earlier on said leaders must resist the temptation to build walls to shut out better ideas on the BBI report.

Ruto via Twitter on Tuesday night said resisting the temptation will allow Kenyans to build bridges towards consensus.

"The recommendations by CoG to better the workings of devolution which has decentralised power,  resources and growth centres thereby eliminating marginalisation deserves attention," he said.