Nairobi — Azimio La Umoja One Kenya coalition party now says it has already collected 1.2 million signatures.
Speaking during the launch of the digital signature collection platform on Tuesday, the coalition’s leader Raila Odinga stated that it will complement the other efforts of civil disobedience, tax boycotts and defiance against the Finance Act 2023.
He indicated that this will continue to continue putting pressure on the government to repeal the Act and take active steps to reduce living expenses.
“Kenya Kwanza has questioned where we will take the signatures and the legality of the exercise. We don’t expect them to understand, they don’t understand the people’s power as of now, but with time they will do,” he said.
“We appeal to more people to come out and append their signatures to this historic undertaking.”
He asked Kenyans to select the manual or digital platform that they feel most comfortable using.
“The process we are engaging in is about the deliberate policy decisions by the Kenya Kwanza regime to make life unbearable to a great majority of Kenyans despite the consistent appeal by Kenyans for the regime to take actions to lessen their burden,” he added.
He also said that the coalition intend to move to court and institute prosecution against individual officers who got involved in unconstitutional and illegal actions against protesters during their protests.
Odinga added that by resorting to civil disobedience and protests they can’t be wrong unless the law itself is wrong and Kenyans must never be made to believe that they are wrong when they protest.
“We therefore ask Kenyans to film, photograph and record all those police officers who shoot at or in any other way hurt protesters in the course of our activities,” he added.
“Such officers are acting in disregard of the constitution, and we must make them pay for their illegal activities.”
The Azimio la Umoja leader announced the commencement of the signature collection on Friday at Kamukunji grounds in Nairobi.
However, the constitution states that a president can only be ousted by way of the Parliament and only two grounds; impeachment and incapacity.
In the case of impeachment, a legislator, supported by at least a third of all MPs, moves a motion for impeachment on three grounds.
They include a gross violation of a provision of the Constitution or of any other law, serious reasons for believing that the President has committed a crime under national or international law or for gross misconduct.
In the case of incapacity, this will be on grounds of either mental or physical incapacity hindering the head of state from performing their duties.