President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition chief Raila Odinga at Harambee House on March 9, 2018. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
It took long hours, and many cups of tea, to
broker the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), the two principals at the
centre of the ‘handshake’ revealed Wednesday.
While
launching the BBI Report yesterday at the Bomas of Kenya, President
Uhuru Kenyatta and ODM leader Raila Odinga offered the public a glimpse
of how they came together after the contested 2017 General Election and
the repeat presidential election.
“I
want to thank my brother Raila Odinga because our first meeting was not
easy. Just as you were worried, we too were worried. We wondered about
what we would tell each other when we met. When we finally met, we took
tea for about 45 minutes in an awkward environment. We made small talk
about our families. It was difficult talking to each other because of
the pent up emotions from the elections,” President Kenyatta said.
This meeting took place before the "handshake" on March 9, 2018.
According
to President Kenyatta, after more than one hour of saying nothing
substantial to each other, they realised that their aides had left the
room and they were just the two of them in there. It is at this point
that they started talking.
“When the
ice was finally broken, we almost spent the night at the venue of our
meeting. As we were wrapping up, we realised that our differences were
not as deep as we were making them. It was divisive politics that caused
this. That every five years Kenyans have to fight,” he said.
According to the President, that was the beginning of BBI.
“We
agreed to put our politics aside and ask ourselves the causes of our
divisions and ensure that no more blood will be spilt, no more property
will be destroyed and Kenyans will not be worried every election time,”
he added.
According to Mr Odinga, the
tension in the country and suspicion among politicians was too much for
them. “It took 19 hours and it was not easy because we had called each
other all sorts of names during the elections. After the long
deliberations, we agreed that we had something that we can actually put
together,” he said.
In putting
together their thoughts on the way forward after the divisive elections,
Mr Odinga revealed that they each invited their lawyers to draft the
statement that they issued on March 9, 2018, when they met at Harambee
House.
“We told them (the lawyers)
what we felt was wrong with our society, what needed to be corrected and
gave them the responsibility of putting it together. We then said we
would have this conversation just between ourselves first. We were not
talking about 2022 but 2017 going backwards — how we can change this
country, create a new narrative and bring the country together,” said Mr
Odinga.
Before the revelations
yesterday, there had been reports of clandestine meetings between the
two and their trusted aides, including one that was hosted by a top
judiciary officer, as efforts to bring the two together assumed a new
urgency at the beginning of 2018.
No comments :
Post a Comment