Just a few hours to the end of 2020, the IEBC admin made what is seen as a personal blunder and called BBI a ‘Burning Bridges Innitiative.
What the IEBC’s Twitter admin wanted to say was that the electoral commission had embarked on the signature verification of the Building Bridges Initiative.signature verification of the Building Bridges Initiative.
The BBI came after Uhuru-Raila handshake and is now their political cause to either rape or save the country depending on how well you can read and analyse a report.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE SIGNATURE VERIFICATION EXERCISE?
After the verification of signatures, the IEBC will submit the Bill to the 47 county assemblies and the regional Houses will have three months within which to consider the Bill.
The Constitution stipulates that, when and if more than half (24 county assemblies) pass the Bill, it will be introduced to the Senate and the National Assembly.
“A Bill to amend this Constitution shall not be called for second reading in either House within 90 days after the first reading of the Bill in that House,” the Constitution says.
This means the least time Parliament can take is 90 days, assuming all the other processes are cramped into one day after the immovable deadline between the first and second readings.
The Constitution does not say how long Parliament should take, after passing the Bill, to pass it on to the President, or how long the President shall take once that Bill is on his desk.
It also does not state the period for the introduction of a draft Bill in Parliament upon approval by county assemblies.
Two committees of the National Assembly have been ordered by Speaker Justin Muturi to harmonise laws on the referendum in what is expected to guide these and other processes on the long road to overhauling the 2010 Constitution.
Legal experts have, however, in such cases, insisted that the process, if timelines are not stated, is guided by the principle of reasonable timeline in the supreme law.
The commission has 90 days within which to hold a referendum, once the President passes his message to the IEBC to hold a referendum on the receipt of the Bill from Parliament.
