The Political Parties Liaison Committee has accused the Building Bridges Initiative taskforce for deliberately sidelining other political parties’ recommendations. – By Gerald Gekara
The PPLC that provides legal platform for dialogue between the IEBC, Registrar of Political Parties and Political Parties argues that the BBI was meant to be for all parties without sidelining any other views.
“ONLY TWO Political Parties have commandeered the process to the exclusion of all the rest. In this light, it is our further request that the BBI Team should incorporate representatives from PPLC – Inclusivity MUST be practiced and not only talked about.” The statement read.
PPLC further narrated how a crucial ammendment was ignored by the report, signalling an attempt to ‘trample on democracy.”
“During our last submission to the BBI Committee, PPLC spoke in great detail the need for the state to fund all fully registered political parties. However, and to our utter dismay, our recommendations on this matter were broadly ignored in the final report. In our view, this is a calculated attempt at using the BBI, which is under the stranglehold of the TWO Funded Political Parties, to benefit from Taxpayers monies to the exclusion of other Kenyans.”
The PPLC also added thar 69 political parties submitted reports that they were ignored by the crafters of the Final BBI Report currently. The committee further warned that the continued ignorance would trample the success of the BBI Report.
“Given that each of the political parties is required to have at least 24,000 unique members with most having over 30,0000 members, it means that these 69 political parties have a membership of over 2.1 million that is being fully ignored by the crafters of the BBI.”
Earlier this week, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga announced that the window for recommendations was closed and would not accept new recommendations.
The decision prompted mass outcry from the political class, churches and other groups that have accused the taskforce for deliberately locking out those who oppose.
