BY JOAN WANJIKU,NAIROBI,30TH JUNE,2021-Lawyer Otiende Amollo has claimed that BBI promoters were Suna East MP Junet Mohammed and BBI secretariat co-chair Dennis Waweru.
“… the promoters were Waweru and Junet but the court insists that it was President Uhuru Kenyatta,” he said.
Speaking during his submissions on Wednesday, Otiende said anyone is allowed to support the initiative and that is what the president did.
“The one thing the court does not do in their 300 page judgement is fail to ask who are the promoters. BBI is an initiative promoted by Waweru and Junet. They engaged with the IEBC and collected the signatures,” he said.
He said the ideas were reduced into a bill and it’s at that point that the popular initiative started.
“The IEBC accepted the Junet and Waweru initiative and were authorized to collect signatures from Kenyans. They collected the signatures and submitted them to IEBC which did a letter to the counties and confirmed to them who the promoters of the BBI are,” he said.
“Without a doubt the promoters of the initiative are the two gentlemen that I have mentioned above.”
The JLAC report shows the two appeared before the committee as the promoters.
“Can the president initiate popular initiative? Even though he did not initiate it nothing stops the president from initiating the promoting a popular initiative,” he said.
“Anyone can campaign for any cause so are this rights limited to exclude the president. It’s a misconception that the president can only go through parliament that is a not true.”
The lawyer said there is no such word as ‘initiator’ there is only ‘promoter’.
