Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna has criticised President William Ruto’s Thursday night address, accusing him of blurring the line between constitutional values and his development agenda.
Ruto spoke for about 40 minutes from State House, Nairobi in a nationally televised address billed as a statement on Kenya’s future.
But even as official details of the speech remained limited by press time, Sifuna moved quickly to challenge its framing.
In his response, the ODM Secretary-General said the president had attempted to equate development with the foundational principles of the Constitution, a position he rejected as misleading.
“Ruto just spent 40 minutes trying to create a false equivalence between our national values set out in the constitution and his so-called ‘development’,” Sifuna said.
He argued that the Constitution is structured to prioritise core national ideals before economic rights, cautioning against what he described as a shift in emphasis by the executive.
“There is a reason the Preamble comes before Article 43. You don’t get to the ‘development’ clauses until and unless you have taken into account the reasons we passed this constitution in the first place,” he said.
Sifuna listed democracy, human rights, freedom, equality, rule of law and social justice as the guiding principles that should underpin any government programme.
His remarks add to growing political scrutiny over the administration’s governance approach, particularly on civil liberties and economic policy.