2022 Elections : It should be 5 years for Uhuru not five years plus one day

Image result for Okiya OmtatahOkiya Omtatah and Wycliffe Gisebe have filed a petition in quest of declaring that the next General Election should be held a year earlier than the anticipated 2022.

Two activists say it’s unconstitutional to hold the elections in 2022 as the term of the current elected leaders will have to exceed the constitutional term limit.

The polls set for August 9, 2022, will be five years plus one day after the August 8, 2017, elections.

 

This means that the day will be in the sixth year which is the basis for Omtatah’s petition.

The second Tuesday of August 2022 will fall in the sixth year after the 2017 elections, while the Constitution requires that the election is held on the second Tuesday of August of the fifth year.

“When five years are added to the year 2017 we get the year 2022. That math is flawed to the extent that it is a computation of the state of affairs after five years and not of in (or within) five years,” the petitioners say.

Elections have to be held within the five-year period which runs from August 8 to August 7, 2022.

Omtatah argues that the elections must be held the year before but the second Tuesday in August 2022 will be in the sixth year.

 

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“Holding the elections on either 9 or 16 August 2022 will allow the parliamentary term to exceed the five-year term limit by two days or nine days,” he says.

Okiya Omtatah’s describes his contention as a major Constitutional Crisis if the next General Election is held on the 2nd Tuesday at the End of the 5th year.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) should clear the air by formally gazetting the date of the next General Election.

Majority of Kenyans, including all politicians, expect it to be in the year 2022; but to some it should be in 2021.

 

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The 2022 view is based on the simple math that 2017 + 5 = 2022. However, if that logic is applied to the date of the last election, it doesn’t seem to work out.

The first election under the new Constitution was held in 2013, therefore, since 2013 + 5 = 2018, so the second one should have been held in 2018. The question then is: why did we hold a General Election in 2017?

Lawyers like to say that “the law is very clear,” but I prefer to say that our Constitution is very comprehensive. It has even given the rules to be followed when determining the duration of events. This is what it says in Article 259:

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