‘There will be no handshake!’ President Ruto speaks on deal with Raila

Speaking on Tuesday during his visit to Kigali- Rwanda for the 9th session of the Joint Permanent Commission for Cooperatives, Ruto clarified that his willingness to hold dialogue with Odinga was based on ironing out issues that had led to the violence and chaotic anti-government protests led by the Azimio opposition coalition.

 “As I said on Sunday, in times like this, you have to put your house in order. As president, I owe it to the people of Kenya to provide leadership and on Sunday I did ask the opposition to reconsider calling off the demonstrations they had undertaken because -protests and demonstrations are provided for in the Constitution but they were acquiring an ugly violent turn that was destroying property, putting a lot of lives into risk and a lot of unnecessary chaos,” he stated.

“I did offer them that whatever issues they had, there were democratic, constitutional and legal channels of raising those issues using the platform of parliament in a bi-partisan and that is the offer I made to the opposition.”

He added: “There will be no handshake but there will be an engagement in parliament on the issues that have been raised. Those that parliament can resolve, they will resolve.”

The head of state went on to put in context his idea of a no-handshake government saying that his call for peace should not be misinterpreted as the previous handshake between former President Uhuru Kenyatta and the Azimio chief.

“If I say there will be no handshake, I know there is a context. Unfortunately for us in Kenya, handshake has a different connotation, and that is the one I am talking about... The handshake that brings the opposition and government into some conundrum, a mongrel and an outfit that is undemocratic, unconstitutional and illegal,” he explained.

According to the president, the 2018 handshake resulted in a government without Opposition which he believes was the downfall of the Jubilee administration.

“Kenya is a democracy, and it is underpinned by a system of checks and balances where you have a government and an opposition. The history we have of the handshake is where there was a fusion of government and the opposition and the results were very disastrous for the country,” he stated.

“There wasn’t any accountability, the whole system went rogue, and the people of Kenya do not want a situation where democracy and the system of checks of balances are undermined. They want a democracy where a system of checks and balances work.”

President Ruto added: “I am a great  believer in a system where there are robust checks and balances because that is the only way you can hold the executive or government to account, which works for everybody (citizens, government and opposition) because they become part of the success of a government.”

While President Ruto wants a bi-partisan engagement in Parliament to resolve issues raised by the Opposition, Mr. Odinga insists on having a conversation at the national level through a process akin to the 2008 National Accord, which was brokered by Koffi Annan.