Amid the hot debate that the Finance Bill 2023 has sparked in the country with a number of Kenyans rejecting the same for what it contains and seeks to bring in the country, lawyer Miguna Miguna has called on President William Ruto to listen to the people instead of forcing his way.
Miguna who is against the bill has been passionately sending the Kenya Kwanza administration some free pieces of advice on how to move forward with the controversial bill now that it’s facing some opposition from Kenyans.
Then come today on May 30th, he has kind of reminded the President one of the most important Articles of the Constitution of Kenya that any leader should never forget, that’s Article 1 which states that “all sovereign power belongs to the people of Kenya and shall be exercised only in accordance with the Constitution”.
To once again try and convince President William Ruto to listen to the people who hold the sovereign power, Miguna took to Twitter to remind the Head of State how the BBI push which was being propagated by then President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga ended after a rejection of the same by Kenyans, with the current President himself being among those who opposed it.
That “when Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga tried to impose BBI on Kenyans, some of us opposed it immediately.
We didn’t wait for the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court to nullify it.
We didn’t wait for the media or public opinion to show us direction. We saw the gusto, the unbridled arrogance and opaqueness with which it was being pushed and we said NO.”
He reminded the President that Kenyans rejected BBI because they “understood that democracy demands that anything purportedly being done for the people must have them and their interests at conceptualization and implementation stages.”
That “people will only support a public program or policy if the purpose and mechanisms of its implementation are noble, transparent and inclusive”.
He then went ahead to cite other instances where those in leadership failed to listen to the people and how their pushes flopped or ultimately had ugly outcomes.
Pushes like the Mau Forest Water Tower eviction which he advised Raila Odinga to cautiously handle, the 2017/2018 post-election resistance movement by NASA and Kibaki’s appointment of Amos Wako as the Attorney General, a move that ultimately saw Wako banned by the US.
His point with mentioning these cases was that “at each stage, the lesson is that if you are seeking power or trying to maintain it, listen to the people.”
“Never, ever, pretend that you are more knowledgeable or powerful than the people,” he advised the President.
by: AustineBarasa