Coalition for Constitutional Reforms Kenya [CCR-Kenya]

PO Box 4777-00200 Nairobi

Contact: Wanyee Ahmed Kinuthia

International Secretariat

+1-613-316-3119

Ottawa, Canada -- December 14, 2007 – Coalition for Constitutional Reform (CCR-K, www.ccr-kenya.com) will stage a demonstration to press for constitutional reforms, outside the Kenya High Commission in Ottawa, Canada, beginning on 14^th December 2007 from 8.00 am. This is the initial part of the planned political action, that includes boycotting the 2007 General Elections, a hunger strike at Freedom Square (Uhuru Park, Nairobi, beginning on 27^th December 2007), demonstrations, and a cross country walk. The aim is to sensitize Kenyans to rise up and establish a citizen’s assembly that would spearhead people-driven constitutional reforms no later than December 31, 2008.

CCR-K’s aim is to show the world that the political elite of Kenya have hijacked the state and personalized it for their own interests. There is a conspiracy between the elite and multinational exploitative forces to destroy the country’s only means of survival. Seventy percent of Kenya’s wealth is in the hands of foreign multinational corporations (Kenya’s wealth in foreign hands - April 17, 2005, The Sunday Standard), who are systematically plundering and destroying all the natural resources – land, water, minerals, forests, fisheries, and biological resources.

For example, the contract agreement between Tiomin Resources Inc. (Canada) and the Government of Kenya is based on the exploitative "free entry" system, which is the dominant means of granting mineral rights in most countries. The "free entry" system gives miner’s the exclusive right to people-owned mineral substances from the surface of their claim to an unlimited extension downwards. The origin of "free entry" lies in the British land system of the feudal times, which is based on the "fiction" that the Crown has underlying title to all land. Another case is the destruction of the Yala Swamp wetlands by Oklahoma-based Dominion Farms Inc. (watch video: http://www.madaraka.com/Video/13.html).

CCR-K believes that neither Kibaki nor Raila (the two presidential candidates, one of whom will lead the next government), has a plan, will, conviction, or fortitude to free Kenya from neocolonial subjugation and economic exploitation.

Kenyans had taken steps to formulate an empowering constitutional draft called the Bomas draft, which would ensure control of their natural resources as well as participatory governance. But the elite have discarded the Bomas draft and are now governing, with impunity, without a constitutional mandate.

According to CCR-K, the Government of Kenya ceased to be legitimate as of 31^st March 2003, after the expiry of the MOU signed at Ufungamano House, before the 2002 elections. It is this MOU which the elite used to trick Kenyans to give them power under false pretences.

Kenyans gave the outgoing M.P’s, under the respective political parties that sponsored them, a conditional leeway (MOU) to go to the 2002 elections, on the promise that the first order of business of the post-Kanu government would be to complete reforms as swiftly as possible. They were to ensure that Kenya would no longer be governed under the colonial constitution, but under "the people’s" constitution immediately after (the 2002) elections.

Five years later, the same M.P’s are telling us to re-elect them, or their elite counterparts, under the same old constitution.

They have not even acknowledged the MOU that they signed, yet failed to honour. To date, neither the PNU nor the ODM parties has offered Kenyans a roadmap towards the enactment and implementation of the new constitution. The people are simply expected to believe that the next government will deliver it - and that the solution to Kenya’s problems is elections.

The election process itself is fraudulent, as many of the candidates steal public resources and then use these same resources to bribe voters, which is illegal, yet no action is ever taken. Imperial powers on the other hand allow the President to do whatever he/she wishes, particularly with respect to the country’s natural resources. Members of Parliament are not answerable to anyone.

In December 2007, history is about to repeat itself.

Coalition for Constitutional Reform (CCR-K)

www.ccr-kenya.com

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