Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah has called for a revolution while warning against an uprising in the wake of the June 25th anniversary protects that rocked parts of the country.
The senator said that while he backs the push for accountability and reform, public rage must be channelled constructively. He urged for a calm, well-planned change led by the youth through voting.
“Kenya should avoid an uprising,” he said.
“We should have a revolution. This anger must be channelled to a revolution, not to an uprising. Because the danger of an uprising is that it’s chaos. Organised groups can take state power and you can see where Sudan is.”
Omtatah observd that Wednesday’s protests could have taken a turn for the worst had protesters marched to State House. He said he tried to discourage the protesters to avoid more deaths while commemorating victims of police brutality.
“There was a very big pressure for people to march to the State House,” said Omtatah.
“One of the reasons I was sitting down and tracking the crowd was to stop that march, because I believed people were going to be killed. And I didn’t want another life lost, when we were just commemorating the death of other people.”
The 2027 presidential hopeful said that if the crowd had faced forces near State House, it might have led to a possibly dire situation.
“If people are shot, and those shooting run away, power can be taken in a chaotic manner,” he said.
“You don’t know what will result; we could end up jumping from the frying pan into the fire.”
Omtatah implored those leading protests and their followers to focus on voting instead of street protests.
“We must manage this anger, this demand for good governance, in a clever way. Using the Constitution, we can engineer a revolution, and that revolution will have to begin with politics.”
This, he said, can be achieved through mass voter registration.
“People must be registered as voters,” Omtatah said. “Once they are registered, we prepare for elections and monitor each one carefully.”
Omtatah also proposed measures to improve electoral transparency, such as requiring the electoral commission to publish GPS coordinates of all gazetted polling stations.
“In every ward we should say: these are the polling stations gazetted, download the app, move around with the GPS and confirm they exist,” he said.
“Last time, we discovered a polling station allegedly located in a non-existent primary school. One even had just a gate, that’s it.”
