This is the government system Raila wants Kenya to adopt

Opposition leader Raila Odinga is pushing for a parliamentary system of government arguing that presidential structure is recipe for chaos.

Let’s take a look at how the parliamentary system works.

The Prime Minister is the leader of government under the parliamentary system.

The PM also becomes a Member of Parliament by virtue of having the support of the largest number of MPs after elections.

Under this system, ministers also have to be MPs.

Raila said the best thing about the parliamentary system is that once the Prime Minister ceases to enjoy majority support in parliament, he or she can be removed by a vote of the MPs.

The President, under this system, becomes head of government and is a non-party political and a nationally unifying force.

“A parliamentary system is better than the presidential system because the government is in parliament and it can answer questions while in parliament. It is also easy to remove a leader for whatever reason in a parliamentary system than it is to impeach a president in a presidential system,” Raila said.

He said most countries that have embraced the presidential system of governance are mainly in Africa and North America.

These countries, he said, were either running away from a military dictatorship or one party system.

“That is why we are saying we need a parliamentary system where we have a president, prime minister and his assistants to give Kenyans better leadership,” Raila said.

“It’s not just a quest to end tribalism,” he added.

Raila said the largest democracies in the world have embraced the parliamentary system.

He cited Canada, Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Israel, India, Japan, Australia and Scandinavian countries.

On 2022 politics, Raila was non-committal on whether or not he will vie saying it is not important at the moment.

“We said with [President] Uhuru that we don’t want to talk about 2022, we want to unite Kenyans [in the spirit of the handshake].”

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