The Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) has officially presented verified signatures to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Comission (IEBC).
The presented signatures however dropped to 4.4 from 5.2 million earlier collected with BBI Secretariat co-chairperson Dennis Waweru citing internal verification as the reason behind the drop.
“As you are aware, the minimum requirement is one million signatures and so we have decided to submit 4.4million signatures,” the former Dagoretti South MP asserted, adding that the BBI train was unstoppable.
Waweru who was with his co-chair Junet Mohamed handed the BBI signatures and the bill to the electoral body chairman Wafula Chebukati at the IEBC headquarters.
We are waiting for your favourable reply,” said Waweru as he called on the commission to act fast on the soft copy they presented to enable the process proceed to the next level. He maintained that there would be no more review of clauses in the Constitutional (Amendment) Bill, 2020.
On his part, Chebukati informed the BBI Secretariat that the electoral commission will only start verification once they get the requisite budget for it.
“The soft copy will save us the trouble of typing out the hard copies,” noted Chebukati saying the commission will request for a budget from the National Treasury.
“Once we have a budget then the commission shall now proceed and have a referendum committee which will undertake the exercise of signature verification,” he explained.
He noted that the IEBC will be giving periodic updates on the process as and when its applicable.
By Alice Gworo
