Collection of one million BBI signatures to begin next week, declares Raila

Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party leader Raila Odinga now says collection of one million signatures, which are expected to be submitted to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) together with the draft Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) Bill, will begin next week.

Raila, addressing the press on Friday outside his Capitol Hill offices after meeting Coastal leaders, reiterated his earlier statement that the window for giving divergent views on the BBI report was already shut.

“We will be doing the launch of the signature collection sometimes next week. We want that exercise to be done as soon as possible so that the matter can be handed over to the electoral commission, and then we can move towards the next phase of a referendum,” he said.

“This matter, as already mentioned before, should be concluded by latest April next year. That is where we are as far as BBI is concerned.”

Responding to a question from a member of the press on when the draft BBI Bill will be ready, the opposition leader said “Very soon. And very soon is very soon.”

The former premier hit out a section of the clergy who recently slammed the report for allegedly not taking their opinions into consideration saying “they’re entitled to their views, but we go by the views of the majority of our people.”

He further added that only editorial issues will be considered onwards, adding that new views will not be entertained or included in the report.

“People have had an opportunity to talk about those issues, two years now, the clergy themselves had an opportunity to express their views. This is a democratic society, they’re entitled to their views, but we go by the views of the majority of our people,” said Raila.

“We’re not going to bring in substantive new issues, these are basically editorial issues which are being captured. There are certain issues which probably had been mentioned but were not captured, they’re being added. That’s what we mean by ‘editorial’.”

Raila Odinga: BBI signature collection to be launched next week.
We want that exercise done as quickly as possible so that the matter is handed to IEBC then we can move towards the next phase of a referendum. This matter should be concluded by latest April next year. pic.twitter.com/hkSkDtroxI

— Citizen TV Kenya (@citizentvkenya) November 13, 2020