President William Ruto (right) and Paul Kagame. PHOTO: COURTESY
President William Ruto has reiterated he will not agree to a political handshake with Azimio leader Raila Odinga.
Speaking in Rwanda where he is on a two-day official visit, President Ruto explained that the recent approach from his government to allow the opposition to table their issues is not a way of bringing them on board.
The Head of State was responding to a question from one of the journalists present during a joint press address with his host President Paul Kagame.
“I want to tell you there will be no handshake, but there will be an engagement in Parliament on the issues that have been raised. Those that the Parliament can resolve, they will be resolved,” President Ruto said.
The President said that his step was to ensure that the country’s democracy is not undermined.
“We have a government and opposition. We don’t want democracy to be undermined. Kenyans want a democracy where the system of checks and balances works,” President Ruto said.
“Unfortunately for us in Kenya, a handshake has a different connotation, and that is what I’m talking about. The handshake that brings the opposition and government into some conundrum, and a mongrel and an outfit that is undemocratic, unconstitutional and illegal.”
President Ruto stressed that Kenya is a democratic nation, where checks and balances are underpinned with the opposition side playing its role of keeping the government on its toes.
“The history we have of a handshake is where there was a fusion of government and the opposition and the results were disastrous. There wasn’t any accountability, the whole system went rogue, and the people of Kenya do not want a situation where democracy is undermined.”
Also, the President said that the opposition side declared their paralleled results of the presidential election which they are yet to reveal the origin, other than saying that they were revealed to them by the whistleblower.
“Subsequently, somehow the opposition, after five months decided to claim that they were told by a whistleblower that the results were possibly different. They haven’t been good enough to tell us who the whistleblower is and how they arrived at a different set of results than one that was released by our Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.”
His remarks come at the moment when the opposition side is holding its Parliamentary Group meeting to deliberate on the approach that they will take ahead of the showdown with the government at the Parliament.
The discussions between the government and opposition led to the temporary halt of demonstrations which had been called by Mr Odinga.
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