Ruto, Raila oppose postponement of 2022 elections
National Assembly Minority leader Junet Mohamed has joined Deputy President William Ruto on stressing that the 2022 polls should be conducted as stated by the constitution.
“We are strongly opposed to any debate on postponing next year’s election. Not even for a minute should the General Election be extended,” June said in an interview with a local daily.
Junet’s statement comes a barely a week after Ruto shared the same statements during a live TV interview.
“Those saying you must change the Constitution whether you like it or not... whether the courts like it or not... and if you don’t we are going to postpone the elections... that is the language of impunity,” Ruto said.
According to Junet, Kenyans must respect the dictates of the constitution by ensuring that the term limits were adhered to.
“We must respect the Constitution even as we pursue to make it better through the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI). We cannot plan to break the law and extend polls date because we want to change the law,” Junet said.
The recent statements by Ruto and Junet comes after Trade unionist Francis Atwoli declared that next year’s polls will be postponed if the courts don't give a favorable judgment on BBI.
"If anything happens and they don't give us a ruling, we will still move to the supreme court. If we don't get it then we will appeal through our Parliamentarians to extend the election even by one year," Atwoli said.
In his statement, Atwoli claimed the interest of workers and Kenyans at large are the main reason behind the decision to allegedly postpone next year’s polls.
"We want peace in this country as workers, after every five years the recipients of the problems are workers. Our children are maimed.
"Our children are killed. Those people who do seasonal or casual or contractual employment when there are problems, they don't get work," Atwoli said.
However, Junet argued that the BBI bill will pass even after next year’s polls.
“Referendum is a one-day business. It is not like the General Election where people are competing for six different positions and the contestants could be as many as 10,000 people,” the Sina East MP said.
He stated that BBI is bigger than the coming election adding that it will come to pass irrespective of 2022 and that nobody should tie BBI to 2022.
