Deputy President stole the show during the launch of the BBi Report in Bomas of Kenya.
Ruto cited five proposed changes in the report he said he was uncomfortable with, including suggestions to expand the Executive.
The BBI report has proposed the creation of the office of the prime minister and two deputies, all appointed by the President.
“This thing of winner-takes-all… we will have to look into it because we want to unite our people,” Uhuru said in Kisumu last Thursday. Ruto questioned the rationale behind an elected president being the one to appoint the Prime Minister and the 2 deputies. “The President will appoint the PM and the two deputies from the winning coalition. And then we will have the runners up being the leader of the opposition. The question I am asking myself is, have we sorted out the winner-takes-all question?” he posed.
The proposal to have two political parties [Majority and Minority] participate in the appointment of the commissioners to the IEBC, the DP said, would compromise the doctrine of fair political competition.
“How fair will be a league where the referee is appointed by teams and not all the teams? How fair will this league be?” he asked.
Concerning the envisioned reforms in the National Police Service, Ruto opposed the ‘politicisation’ of the service, rejecting the formation of the Kenya Police Council to be chaired by the Interior Cabinet Secretary.
Further, Ruto opposed the proposal to have the President appoint the Judiciary Ombudsman, terming it a derogation of the independence of the Judiciary.
“We must be careful about the independence of institutions. We are coming from a history where judges received telephone calls. Where courts were held at night. We do not want to go back there,” he reckoned.
While backing the suggestion to increase the allocation of funds to the counties from the current 15 to 35 per cent, the DP said it would be ironical to release more funds to them when the Senate has been downgraded.
He said the Senate should be upgraded and given the power to allocate money through the Division of Revenue Bill. The Senate, he said, should be made an upper house and strengthened to effectively oversight the funds.
On the issue of replacing the 47 women reps with 47 female senators to sit in the downgraded senate, “….. we are making the participation of women nominal. The participation of women should be substantive,” he said.
