Nairobi, 11 December, 2020 / 5:28 pm (ACI Africa).
Christian leaders in Kenya are calling on politicians in the East African nation to separate the debate around a referendum on the Constitution and the 2022 succession politics to guarantee peace and stability in the country.
In their collective statement Friday, December 11, representatives of various Christian churches in Kenya make reference to the “divisive” 2005 constitutional referendum held two years before the general election that ended in the 2007/2008 “devastating wave of post-election violence.”
“As Kenyans we need to do all we can to prevent a similar occurrence. Key in this will be separating the politics of the referendum from the politics of 2022 General Elections,” the leaders say in the six-page statement issued at the end of their two-day National Christian Conference.
In Kenya, political leaders supportive of the “handshake” between President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga have been collecting signatures to amend the 2010 Constitution through the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), a process that is expected to culminate into a constitutional referendum.