Ndaragwa MP Kioni preparing petition to delay elections in constituencies row

Ndaragwa MP Kioni preparing petition to delay elections in constituencies row

The 2022 general election is a little over one year away, with the constitution stipulating that it must take place on the 9th of August 2022.

However, a threat by a section of members of parliament to move to court to compel IEBC to conduct the boundary review before the General Election could re-open the discussion on what it would take to postpone the election.

The parliamentarians led by Ndaragwa MP Jeremiah Kioni represent 26 Constituencies including Ndaragwa, Mvita, Budalangi and Lamu West that enjoy special protection because they do not meet the constitutional threshold per constituency of 163,000 voters.

Ndaragwa MP Kioni told Citizen TV that the MPs will meet next week to finalize their petition to claim that going to an election with the issue unresolved could lead to a constitutional crisis with the retention of their electoral units in doubt.

But the timing of this move is bound to draw suspicion from those opposed to any move to postpone the election.

Deputy President William Ruto has previously warned that there was a scheme to do so, to force through constitutional amendments via the building bridges initiative.

ANC leader Musalia Mudavadi has in the past also cautioned against any move to postpone the election.

According to Chapter Seven Article 89 of the Constitution it mandates the IEBC to review the names and boundaries of constituencies at intervals of not less than 8 years, and not more than 12 years, but any review shall be completed at least 12 months before a general election of members of parliament.

“The last boundaries’ delimitation exercise was conducted in 2012 and the commission has up to March 2024 to undertake and conclude the next review…. .”

In the meantime, the IEBC has stated that, “until the boundaries review process is concluded, all the existing 290 constituencies remain as they are.”

Despite this declaration in writing by the IEBC, Ndaragwa MP and others are not satisfied and their next moves on the same may be viewed as nothing less than suspicious by those wary of a scheme to postpone next year’s election through all means.

This is not the first time this will have happened under the 2010 constitution because at the tail end of President Mwai Kibaki’s term the courts pushed the poll date back by three months to march 4, 2013.

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