 Kenya has seen major developments on the political front over the past year. Archrivals President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Rai Laodinga have come together as part of what has been termed the Building Bridges Initiative. The president introduced a plan to alter the constitution which would have affected 13 out of its 18 chapters. Critics say that the plan would have basically made a mockery of political choice for Kenyans due to the two major forces coming to power. There was mass opposition to the bill inside Kenya and the judiciary struck it down although the matter will still come up before the Supreme Court early next year. The Communist Party of Kenya has been in the forefront of the opposition to this amendment as well to other policies of the government. Booker Gessa Omole, National Vice-Chairperson of the Communist Party of Kenya explains the context in the country as well as the prevailing economic situation. The Communist Party of Kenya had declared that 2021 would be the year to dent capitalism in Kenya and the Communist Party of Kenya and its leadership and members are aware of its continental, its global and its national mandate in terms of setting a different narrative or a national agenda away from the neo-colonial capitalist state that continues to dominate Kenya today. The most important task nationally for the Communist Party of Kenya was basically to consolidate all the gains that Kenya has since achieved because we know that since the struggle for independence until today there has been several gains that we actually know that those gains have been a product of the struggle of the Kenyan masses and the workers here in Kenya. The Communist Party of Kenya therefore will not relent in terms of defending those gains. The most important one is the reintroduction of multi-partisan politics and the reintroduction of multi-partisan politics which came under what you call the appeal of Section 2A of the Kenyan constitution under the dictatorship of Moe at that time only makes sense with the present of the Communist Party of Kenya because the other political outfits in our country are bourgeois outfits or what we call capitalist parties and if we are to talk about a democracy we cannot talk about a democracy that only pursues capitalism democracy but the Communist Party of Kenya brings a new democracy which is the democracy of majority. In the recent events in the Kenyan struggle we have seen an attempt by the neo-colonial Kenyan state led by President Mr. Kenyatta in a view to dilute those gains through a constitutional review which was under the infamous Building Bridges initiative that was defeated both in public opinion and also in judiciary and this was championed by the Communist Party of Kenya and we led several demonstrations and street actions to sensitize the Kenyan masses that in the event that we allow the insignificant minority in our country to interfere with the constitutional review of 2010 then it will have unrolled several gains and it will be a sell out to several poor people that have martyred in the streets defending this democratic space. The Building Bridges initiative was a sad architect by the status quo of this country by the rich country the rich people in this country to try and introduce you know a dictatorship absolutely to enforce a dictatorship of the rich in our country but through political literacy and intensive campaigns that was led by the Communist Party of Kenya then we have seen that the Kenyan masses rejected it resoundingly in the in the in the court of public opinion and the Kenyan judiciary played their second role as the defenders of the people to actually throw the constitutional amendment the the proposed constitutional amendment that was mooted by the president and in the leader of opposition at that time the second part of it is that we have also seen nationally that when the pandemic actually came to be the COVID-19 we have seen that it exposed the Kenyan state that and its and its real nature that it's only skewed towards favoring a few businessmen so the Communist Party of Kenya led a relentless struggle in the street to mobilize the hotel workers to mobilize the workers on the forefront that means the the workers in in health sector to demand that the Kenyan state must then now assays the opportunity to nationalize you know and socialize our healthcare in this country but in in many ways there we have only seen that the disaster capitalism that was used at that time was to enrich a few individuals now the infamous COVID-19 millionaires and billionaires most of them are friends and relatives of the high political leaders you know starting with the president's relatives that have assays the COVID-19 pandemic to do business not really to do business but to be the top invoices of work not done to rob the Kenyan people from their taxes so in that way that also highlighted the level of the state repression in this country when the Communist Party of Kenya headquarters in Nairobi was termed by the Kenyan state and the only thing that they were accused for is to organize demonstration to highlight the failure of the this neocolonial puppet government in terms of handling the issues to do with workers and the masses during the pandemic and each and every step that was taken to control the COVID-19 pandemic was basically a copy and paste from the imperialist countries of the west and it was not based on any scientific program to advance the dignity of the dignity of the Kenyan people and the Kenyan workers now in terms of economic progress in this country it has continued to benefit only a few people in fact the president of this country Mr Kenyatta has taken the Kenyan people for granted he has continued repeatedly on the national broadcasters telling the Kenyan people that the GDP has continued to grow but we have seen that we have a budget worth trillions of shillings we have a lot of money in our economy but the social indicators including what we call health food and and even if you go to education the literacy level does not they continue to be deplorable we have also seen the unemployment continued to people to the unemployment in our country the unemployment crisis continued to deepen in our country so in terms of economic it has continued to only favor a few billionaires in our country and we are warning the Mr Kenyatta that he should not continue to hide on GDP but he should be frank with the Kenyan people to talk about the social indicators in our country for its consistent opposition to the policies of the ruling dispensation the communist party of kenya has faced repression from the Kenyan state including an attack on its office how has the party faced this repression and what has been its position on the role played by foreign powers in the affairs of the country the state attack on the communist party of kenya is not unprecedented because the communists that have been organizing in this country both covertly and now we can say overtly has been a target of anti-communist propaganda there have been a target of the state repression in this country several years back before the coming of the 2010 constitution we had seen a calculated well-funded attack by the western media in coalition with them their neocolonial puppet here at home to actually accused anybody that was reading communist literature and they of having committed an offense through a seditious and you know a illegal act that so most of our comrades are not just jailed but some of them are exiled and we as the communist party of kenya today recognizes their struggles and we say that we are only advancing the Kenyans the Kenyans the Kenyan struggle that has been on the moving you know trajectory and then we also have seen the international you know the international organizations that are west leaning for example the IMF and world bank that has continued to enforce not just austerity measures against in attack of the Kenyan workers but they have continued to get into illegal you know agreements with the Kenyan government to loan them in a view you know to have a double layer of colonization in the event that they want to over burden the Kenyan people with the debts and in that view the communist party has led a front to reject the imperialist loans and their internal interference on the Kenyan issues the the other issue that we cannot fail to mention is the program that was introduced by George Bush in our country that has continued to construct what we call we may call call it the modern day slavery the Agoa program that led to the construction of epz the economic processing zone where people all the labor laws have been thrown out of the window and the multinationals are having a filled day to pay as low as possible they are benefiting from tax breaks they are they are benefiting from you know subsidized cost of water and electricity while the workers in those areas are paid for actually they are literally working for free because in those areas they are paid as low as one dollar a day and in areas like uh naivasha where we have the flower farms they are even exposed to difficult chemicals that the multinationals will never imagine to use in their countries the communist party of kenya has continued to consolidate the workers movement in those areas to demand just not for the workers right but for the political mobilization that will lead to an ultimate change of this system that have continued to subjugate the majority of the kenyan people we've also had the the what we call the foreign military basis that is led by our the imperial britain that colonized our country they still retain the abatuk in nanyuki that continued to you know to move in in in unlawful ways including raping children and and interfering with our internal affairs of these countries detonating bombs that you know are detrimental to people's health so the communist party of kenya has continued to sensitize the kenyan workers and the people that we do not have a room in this country for any foreign military basis and what they're calling the african that is meant to incalculate the imperialist army among the local army the communist party of kenya has led campaigns to reject those initiatives and most importantly next year in 2022 we are going to go to the national elections and the communist party of kenya is taking a forefront to challenge the organization around money the organization around the dictatorship of the rich the organization around mobilization of the kenyan people around the ethnicity