Promoters of BBI Bill allege plot to derail referendum plan

Controversy has rocked the BBI push for a referendum after it emerged there exists varying BBI bills—this spooking proponents of the exercise who are now alleging a plot to derail the exercise.

We have just moved from the last attempt of sabotaging BBI saying they were going to make amendments to the document, that has failed and to me this is a new attempt of trying to come up with a credible reason to sink BBI

Paul Mwangi, a key drafter of the Bill said they presented only a single copy of the Bill to the IEBC that was to be transmitted to the 47 county assemblies—IEBC could only make copies of the bill without any alterations— with the commission on its part distancing itself from any culpability saying they received printed copies the BBI constitutional amendment bill and forwarded to the county assemblies without touching on the content of the bill

The joint justice and legal affairs committee says it learnt that only 13 county assemblies debated and approved the correct BBI bill—and that the Bill at the National Assembly is at variance with the one at the Senate—for instance, the second schedule in the national assembly’s document speaks article 89(7) but that of the senate is making reference to article 87(7)—this notwithstanding that the correct reference here was article 89(7)

It is also emerging that Nyamira County Assembly considered and approved the Bomas BBI draft—it took the realization of the Senate for the county assembly speaker to make amends and send the correct Bill.

“We would only start talking about a problem if speakers from various assemblies say they tabled the wrong document from IEBC or say they possibly made a mistake and tabled a foreign document which they have to explain where they got it from,” Mr Mwangi said

With these new developments its back to square one for the committee on whether to amend or not the BBI bill—there is a fresh split within the committee on how to move forward in dealing with the varying documents—a section of the committee members now ready to make edits to the documents and harmonize the bills to have them make sense, but this has been opposed by the other members—

Experts tasked by the committee while ruling out amending the BBI bill said parliament could only correct typos or issues of form.

Meanwhile, those toying with the idea of editing the document say the Bill is out of form which should be rectified.