By Phil Wesonga via FB
NO, THERE IS NO IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY IN THE BBI
Miguna Miguna has grown old and rusty. His once brilliant reasoning is clouded by blind hatred and juvenile grudge he holds against H.E.s Raila and Uhuru. On this BBI debate his views are irrelevant and inconsequential.
The sad part is that he is being supported by over the hill lawyers like Martha Karua in falsely alleging that the BBI creates an imperial presidency.
Nothing could be further from the truth! BBI has been published and you need to read it to understand it.
But just to debunk some lies, even in the current constitution all constitutional office appointments are made by the President with approval of parliament. So in the imagination of Miguna, Ndii, Karua, Havi et al; why isn’t the current presidency an imperial presidency then?
The restructuring of the executive by BBI bases its rationale on eliminating tribal contestations brought on by the concept of winner-take-all. It seeks to decentralised power to other constitutional offices. More importantly it also provides that Cabinet Ministers may be appointed from among members of the National Assembly at no extra cost of paying double salary!
Imperial presidency and creation of extra seats being perpetuated by people who supported Bomas draft is simply hypocrisy of the highest order because BBI is effectively a cut & paste of the Bomas draft.
To be even in contention to be appointed PM, there are certain prerequisites. The first prerequisite is Electoral – the electorate qualifies you through a party at the vote. Secondly, parliament has the next role. In other words, a president cannot just wake up and say… “so and so is the PM of my choice.” The President is railroaded by the electorate and Parliament into appointing that PM.
The president can’t just wake up and pick a PM from a minority party.
To understand this, people should ignore the spiteful rants of Miguna and Ndii, and instead focus on the PREQUALIFICATION toward the Office of the PM. The electorate plays the most important role in guiding the President’s choice for PM. And that’s a BBI fact that Miguna cannot dispute.
