Nairobi — The Media Owners Association (MOA) has urged all presidential candidates to participate in the organized debate ahead of the August elections.

The plea comes even as Deputy President William Ruto vowed to keep off the debate after alleging unfair bias by the media.

According to MOA chairman Stephen Gitagama, the debate will focus on issue-based elections as well as provide an opportunity for the candidates to debate, interact and engage.

"The debate is to allow the candidates to speak with millions of Kenyans to share their dream, to share their vision and what they would like to deliver to Kenyans once they are elected," he said.

"Also, the debate gives an opportunity to Kenyans to interact to ask questions and create a platform to interact and ask the question to the candidates who want to be their president."

He further indicated that they have engaged all the candidates and stated that they have responded and are willing to attend the exercise whose date will be communicated later.

The Usawa Agenda representative Emmanuel Manyasa said that their main concern is to ensure the candidates promote equity in education.

"As campaigns are held and monitored, education is seen to be the most pressing challenge that candidates have to deal with when they get to office and the debate has to show that education is important and they have to consider it out and tell Kenyans what they are going to do about it," he stated.

"We are in danger of the transition crashing our education system if top candidates don't focus on it and we want to try and push this is idea out and we want to hope that they will be able to come out and tell Kenyans what they are going to do to ensure the seamless transition from 8-4-4 to CBC system and we hope presidential debate will help," he said.

This will be the third televised presidential debate in the country, the first being in 2013.

In the 2017 presidential debate, President Uhuru Kenyatta failed to attend.