The delicate talks seeking to nail a truce between President William Ruto and opposition chief Raila Odinga enter a crucial week as the bipartisan team meets to crack contentious issues.
Last Friday, the 14-member committee pushed their meetings to this week to discuss controversial issues that may make or break the talks.
Sources within the team indicate members would meet Tuesday to thrash out the preliminaries to pave the way for the crucial discussions.
The joint bipartisan team will discuss whether the negotiations would be purely parliamentary or expanded to include non-parliamentarians.
“On the issue of formalisation, we have postponed the substance of that discussion to next week. We have explored some of the various issues around it,” said Rarieda MP Otiende Amollo, who is the committee’s co-chair.
“Whether it will be a parliamentary process, Executive gazettement under Article 131 of the Constitution, we are going to explore all those in detail next week,” he added last week.
Azimio has demanded expansion of the panel outside Parliament, with only resolutions taken there for endorsement.
But Ruto’s wing has maintained that the talks be limited to Parliament.
“As a joint committee, we discussed the issue of framework agreement and tabling respective issues. We need to report that on those twin issues we have made tremendous progress and it is work in progress,” Otiende said.
Tharaka MP George Murugara, the other joint chair, said the panel had lined up five items for discussion but only conclusively addressed one during Friday’s meeting, with the four being pushed to this week.
The team agreed on appointment of joint secretaries.
Consequently, Kenya Kwanza picked lawyer Muthomi Thiankolu to join Azimio’s Paul Mwangi as joint secretaries to the committee.
On Saturday, National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang'ula said that Parliament was willing and ready to facilitate the committee to do its work to ensure lasting peace.
The Speaker said he would offer the team ample time and the necessary parliamentary resources to engage in constructive talks and achieve a peaceful resolution.
The team will also discuss the terms of reference of the 14-member committee that resumed sittings on Friday after two weeks of suspension of talks.
The camps had clashed over composition of the panel with Azimio demanding removal of Eldas MP Adan Keynan (Jubilee) from Kenya Kwanza side while KK demanded removal of Pokot South MP David Pkosing.
This led to a standoff, triggering the suspension of the talks with Azimio resuming their street protests.
Last Wednesday, Keynan succumbed to Azimio’s demands and recused himself from the panel. This unlocked the talks ad Azimio called off the demos.
KK replaced Keynan with Saku MP Dido Rasso.
“We have consulted with Mheshimiwa Keynan and the coalition’s top leadership and Aden Keynan has graciously agreed in the greater interest of the county to recuse himself from the bi-partisan committee,” KK said in a statement.