This archive report was first published on 26 June 2021.
On June 26, 2021, the Court of Appeal delivered a significant ruling in the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) case, allowing Thirdway Alliance party chairman Miruru Waweru to produce fresh evidence to prove that the BBI process is illegal.
The ruling, delivered by Justices Daniel Musinga, Roselyn Nambuye, and Jamilla Mohammed, is a win for BBI opponents (Linda Katiba) as the reports will help them in opposing the four appeals filed by President Kenyatta, Mr. Odinga, and BBI Secretariat, Attorney General, and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) against the High Court decision that scuttled the BBI process.
The joint report of the National Assembly departmental committee on Justice and Legal Affairs (JLAC) and the Hansard of the Senate on the debate and approval of the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill, 2020, contains a detailed analysis by Parliament on the BBI bill with some sections indicating that various proposals in the BBI, such as delimitation and allocation of 70 new constituencies, were legally flawed.
The ruling dismissed objections raised by the Speakers of the Senate and the National Assembly, the Attorney General, and the IEBC regarding admissibility of the intended new evidence.
Former Dagoretti South MP Dennis Waweru, a co-promoter of the Constitution of Kenya Amendment Bill, 2020, neither opposed nor supported the admission of the additional evidence, but urged that if the applicant got authority to adduce the additional evidence, the appellants should be given an opportunity to file any relevant response or documents that they would wish to introduce.
