Three former senators have asked the police to unconditionally release 26 Kenyans who were arrested in Nairobi on Tuesday during Saba Saba demonstrations.
Johnson Muthama (Machakos), Hassan Omar (Mombasa) and Boni Khalwale (Kakamega) accused the Jubilee administration of dictatorship. They spoke in Nairobi on Thursday.
The three said the state should respect the rule of law as provided in the Constitution.
“Why were these young protesters visited with truncheons and teargas? Why were they arrested and detained? Because they dared march to express their outrage at government sanctioned forced displacement of vulnerable groups in the middle of a global pandemic, repudiate police killings and subject illegitimate amendments to the 2010 Constitution," Omar said.
The former Mombasa senator said protesters have a right to a peaceful demonstration, assembly and to express themselves.
"What we witnessed on July 7 was complete disregard of the rules of legality, necessity and proportionality by the police and a clear adoption of brutal force as a guiding operational principle designed to inflict maximum pain and terror on young citizen," he said.
Muthama criticised President Uhuru Kenyatta for planning to force constitutional amendments, yet the government cannot respect the current provisions.
He said before Uhuru and ODM leader Raila Odinga can think of pushing for amendments, they should first ensure that the Constitution that was promulgated in 2010 is fully implemented.
"More fundamentally, the question which must exercise the minds of Kenyans of goodwill is whether you can on one hand vandalise the current Constitution, disrespect its basic values, disobey judicial decrees and yet on the other hand purport to lead the change to improve the current constitutional and governance framework," Muthama said.
He said the use of force and the capture of constitutional independent agencies is part of the wider scheme by the President to force the adoption of the Building Bridges Initiative task force report.
Muthama said Kenyans will not accept a flawed process to amend the Constitution, saying the process should be people-driven "unlike now when it is a project of two individuals who want to preserve their interests ".
"The climate of intolerance to divergent views is being cultivated ahead of the release of the BBI proposals, says a greater deal about the desperation of its promoters that their initiative should attract neither criticism nor opposition and instead should be adopted as proposed subject to the least possible debate or interrogation," he said.
"We reject this vision and modus operandi as incompatible with the participatory democratic order we and our forefathers sacrificed to establish.”