Long-serving COTU Secretary General Francis Atwoli has expressed a personal opinion regarding the controversial debate on the presidential term limit.
In a TV interview on Wednesday, the trade unionist opined that the limits should scrapped to eliminate the tendency to politicking almost immediately once the elections are over.
Atwoli blamed the political challenges the country is facing on the term limit restriction saying that has made some start planning early on how to take over the reins of a country leading to people campaigning day in, and day-out.
“If you asked me as Francis Atwoli I'd tell you, let us remove term limits. Why? This is what is causing us problems. Somebody is timing, after 10 years I want to be president," he said in an interview with JKL.
Atwoli noted that countries that have scrapped term limits enjoy considerable peace that allows their leaders to focus on development projects.
"Are Ugandans experiencing the same problems we experience here? People have made politics an industry, politics every morning to evening because they know Jeff's term, for example, is almost ending,” Atwoli said.
He further noted that countries in Europe led by Monarchs do not experience the same issues we have in Kenya because they respect their traditions and laws, yet they encourage African countries to have term limits.
The COTU boss questioned the essence of such countries pushing African countries to have elections every five years when they don’t have that.
Atwoli’s remarks come a few weeks after he also called for a review of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010.
Atwoli said Ruto has a lot of battles to fight but the biggest is to have some aspects of the constitution of Kenya 2010 changed.
He insisted that while the President may want to have a project in the country, the constitution allows people to move to court and stop the project even when it is a good one.
The COTU boss noted that with the current Constitution, he might end his term without any projects for the people.
“We will help you but the battle you have is big. The first battle is to help us change the constitution of Kenya. The President wants to bring us a project, people are running to court, they are stopping it, yet it is a national project,” Atwoli said.
