Politicians have been attempting to register the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) and the March 9 handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga as political parties for 2022.<\/p>\n
It has emerged that several applications have been made through proxies in the past couple of months to reserve the names.Acting Registrar of Political Parties Ann Nderitu revealed that politicians were using lawyers and private individuals to reserve the names pending registration ahead of the next General Election.The Registrar’s Office has, however, rejected all the applications citing duplication of names.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarting with the handshake, we have received eight applications by individuals and advocates acting on behalf of various clients. Recently, a few others started bringing on board ‘Building Bridges Initiative’,\u201d said Ms Nderitu.She said some of the proposed names in the applications included BBI Democratic Party and BBI Party, among others. \u201cWe have not accepted the names because when you register a party, it should be uniquely identified from other entities or other parties to avoid confusion.”The disclosure comes against the backdrop of testy political exchanges after Deputy President William Ruto claimed that Raila had hijacked the unity pact to craft an alliance for the 2022 contest.<\/p>\n
Public discourse<\/strong><\/p>\n Nderitu said her decision to reject the names was informed by the fact that both the handshake and the BBI are names already in public discourse.She explained that agreeing to list them would occasion confusion in the country.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you talk of the handshake, it is a symbol of a public debate that is ongoing. It will cause confusion. So we are careful not to register it. Again, when you talk about the BBI, there is already a discourse about it with some people supporting and others opposing.”She added: \u201cWe want to ask Kenyans to be creative. If you just take a running slogan and bring it here, we will not take it.\u201dAlready, nearly 80 names of political parties have been reserved in the last couple of months as the mad rush to list new political vehicles begins.Civic Renewal Party (CRP) that is associated with Murang\u2019a Governor Mwangi wa Iria is one of the new outfits that has been registered.The registration attempts are not unique as they mirror the listing of Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) by Mugambi Imanyara following the 2005 referendum victory by the Raila-led Orange camp.<\/p>\n The \u2018No\u2019 wing would later register the Orange Democratic Movement Kenya (ODM-K) with Makueni MP Daniel Maanzo as the interim chairman.ODM-K brought together Raila, Uhuru, Ruto, Kalonzo Musyoka, Musalia Mudavadi, Najib Balala and Joseph Nyagah.Uhuru would later ditch the outfit and join Kibaki\u2019s re-election campaign team.Maanzo declared ODM-K belonged to Kalonzo after the leaders disagreed on who was to fly the opposition flag against Kibaki.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Politicians have been attempting to register the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) and the March 9 handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga as political parties for 2022. It has emerged that several applications have been made through proxies in the past couple of months to reserve the names.Acting Registrar of Political Parties […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8,10],"tags":[364,235,265,242],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-homepage-english","category-parties","tag-364","tag-bbi","tag-building-bridges-initiative","tag-raila-odinga"],"yoast_head":"\n