Despite the government’s stern warnings, the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition has claimed that the plan to hold anti-government protests from Wednesday to Friday is still on.
Speaking at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Foundation (JOOF) on Monday, National Assembly Minority Leader Opiyo Wandayi stated that they will not back down from exercising their constitutional mandate of peaceful protests.
The Ugunja MP argued that no authority, including President William Ruto, could stop them from carrying out their planned protests.
“The peaceful protests planned for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week are on as earlier declared by our leaders. These protests will go on in line with Article 37 of our Constitution which provides for freedom of peaceful assembly and picketing and no authority has got the power to suspend the operations of Article 37, no person, authority, agency, not William Ruto, Kithure Kindiki, not Rigathi Gachagua,” he said.
“No person and anybody purporting to stop demonstrations is deluding themselves because they have no power.”
At the same time, he said that the signature collection drive to oust President Ruto is still on course and it will happen simultaneously with the protests.
“We can also confirm that the signature collection is going on and it will proceed side by side with the protests. This exercise is also protected under Article 1 of our Constitution,” he said.
Wandayi lashed out at the government, demanding that Ruto resign and admit the failure of their policies in order to ” pave way for a regime that has solutions.”
He contended that the state has lost touch with its citizens, which is one of the reasons citizens are protesting across the country.
“We are shocked at how fast Kenya Kwanza has lost contact with the people and how they don’t understand what Kenyans are going through,” he said.
“Kenya Kwanza claims that the protests are not about the cost of living. In their view, the cost of living is not so high as to warrant protests that is how a regime that has abandoned people’s agenda thinks,” he added.
“If Kenya Kwanza’s solutions are not working for the people then they need to get out of power, just disband and quit.”
