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The Hoax that is the Naivasha Deal |
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Written by Jerry Okungu
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Friday, 29 January 2010 |
The Parliamentary Select Committee is finally showing its true colors. It has shown that it can bastardize the people’s document to suit the narrow whims of just a handful of people in Parliament.
The deal reached by 26 MPs in Naivasha is a hoax that Kenyans must reject even at the risk of not having a new constitution.
It was with good reasons that some Kenyans have wanted a second chamber in parliament. Much like the imperial presidency, Kenya's ninth and tenth parliaments have spiralled out of control. For instance, it was not uncommon for members of parliament to pass irrelevant motions. Further, motions of censor were frequently defeated after money had changed hands between interested parties. The August house has become a market place and a trading floor, a fact that
even MPs themselves have confessed to. To check this abuse of power by the lower house, Kenya needs a stronger elected Senate.
Now this group of so-called constitutional experts
thought it necessary to strike a deal on a Senate of 47 Kenyans
nominated from the counties, with no legislative powers over the Lower
House and worse still relegating them to junior positions. The PSC had the
temerity to restrict the Senate to 4 meetings a year to deal with
county matters. This is an affront to Kenyans and a waste of public
funds.
More importantly, the 47 districts on which the 47
counties are based are now much larger than the constituencies ordinary
MPs will be representing. It is only fair that a senator should be
elected by a larger majority than an MP hence his superiority to the
MP. More critical is the fact that it is wrong to restrict senators to
one seat per county as MPs increase their constituencies.
The
truth of the matter is that each county should have no less than two senators making a total of 94 elected and 6 nominated to represent special
professional skills and interest groups. To say the least, 349 MPs in the Lower House is obscene and wasteful. Kenyan cannot afford this kind of luxury.
Kenyans
do not want a group of 47 nominated senators that will lobby to buy
their seats from the sitting MPs and political regional warlords. They
want to elect their own senators on the same day that members of parliament will be elected.
Because MPs now realize that a pure
presidential system will bar them from the Cabinet, now they are
scheming to elevate themselves as Chairmen of House Committees to
Cabinet status to further siphon public funds they do not deserve. Why
have two parallel sets of cabinet ministers? We need real and genuine
separation of powers. They cannot have their cake and eat it.
To put the size of our bloated cabinet in perspective, let us consider the number of cabinet posts in Obama’s country of 300 million people and an economy hundreds of times larger than Kenya’s. Also let us stop and think of how many
cabinet positions India has with a population of 1.9 billion people. The US has 15 secretaries , heads of cabinet, while India has 78 cabinet ministries .
Once power is devolved into regional governments what would be the use of 25 cabinet ministers in this poor county? Save for the president and his deputy what will the responsibilities of these 25 men and women be?
If we are serious about making effective change with this new constitution Kenya should have a minimum of 8 cabinet ministers
and the same number of assistants.
In their deliberations, did the PSC consider current permanent secretaries? Should the president, in the
next dispensation, appoint beaurocrats and other none elected officials as cabinet ministers, the positions of permanent secretaries will become redundant.
It
is now clear that the 26 MPs in their selfish drive decided to usurp
the powers and mandate of the Committee of Experts (CoE). Instead of looking
at contentious issues pointed out to them by the CoE, they chose to
rewrite the entire document without any regard to the feelings and
aspirations of millions of Kenyans.
It is not clear then why parliament appointed the CoE when the PSC would in the end find themselves competent to re-write the document.
At
this point in time, it is imperative that all Kenyans rise up against
these 26 MPs and reject the document at the referendum if it ever gets
past the CoE and parliament. We cannot afford to pass a document
that serves the personal whims of just a handful of greedy Kenyans.
Yes, let CoE either reject the Naivasha deal or Kenyans will do it for them at the referendum.
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Jerry Okungu |
| About the author: |
| Jerry Okungu runs the Africa News Online and is passionate about all things East Africa. He is also a regular columnist for the New Vision in Uganda, the Star in Nairobi and KIM monthly journal. Okungu is the chairman of Tracesoft East Africa and the CEO of Kenya-Today.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 29 January 2010 )
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Then you critique the CoE and PSC for "striking a deal" - this is exactly what Kenyans need to learn...it's called democracy. The tactical art of negotiation and comprise is at the very heart of the deadlock in the Kenyan political system. We have to find ways to work together, instead of screaming at top pitch our polar position - find common ground.
When done, few if any will love every line of this new constitution. But I guarantee that there will be something that we all like in it. That is something I can live with, can you?