The secret is elusive, yet simple. It lies in the proper meaning of 'the constitution', and what we mean by 'constitution writing'. We are not creating a state, or promulgating a constitution. The Kenyan state, with its myriad defects, genetic and traumatic, is actually, duly constituted. Its constitution dates back to a proclamation of the Privy Council in 1897 of thereabouts. As a protectorate, then colony, this constitution was, at best, both surrogate and nebulous, not to mention that it did not recognise African suffrage. In the Lancaster attempts, we had the chance to develop a document that crystallised the constitutional reality of the emergent independent state and nation, but the contingencies of appeasement, renegotiation and instalment of a black neo-colony prevailed. As a result, the document calling itself the constitution does not enjoy a universal sovereign mandate, to the extent that it is not an accurate statement of our constitution as the Republic of Kenya, and neither does it possess the authentic authorship of the African suffragette. In short, it is a white lie.

Now a lie is a philosophical impossibility. It cannot change reality, nor affect it in anyway, but does play with our perception of it.Even in nature, organisms react only to facts: energy, three-dimensional space, time and matter. Everything from -tropisms to phobia are based on an organism's imperative to respond only to fact, i.e, reality. DNA is therefore, especially environmentally adaptive. It gives the principles on which the organism shall react to diverse sets of fact: adaptation, flight, aggression, reproduction, camouflage, evolution and the rest, are specific responses facilitated by principles encoded in the DNA. And DNA is specific in the real sense of the word. A lion will not react to a set of facts in the same way as a salmon will, nor snake, as gorilla. And this is because those organisms, mimosa pudica, sparrow, lichen, iguana, blackjack, are constituted differently. Their reflexes, instincts, biases and strengths differ greatly, each to accord to its code embodied by its DNA, i.e, its constitution. If therefore in the course of genetic tinkering, man successfully substituted a lion's DNA for a salmon's, the resultant organisms may die, because its constitution will not be viable in the reality of its environmental challenges. Thus constitution is necessarily environmentally conscious and scrupulously relevant. It is the only way to guarantee survival.

I have always thought that we do not need a new constitution, believing that as a statement of our republican sovereign constitution, our constitutional document was supreme law with which we needs must align all our desiderata , and generally get on with it. However, in the course of growing up, and upon further education at the school of life, I see my mistakes. I see clearly that as long as it is not the honest statement of our African will, the instrument we have may be called a constitution, but will not achieve the stature and purposes of one as long as it runs away from our republican reality: of tribes and regions, of imbalances and injustices, of debts and promises, af rudimentary, but necessary pacts and undertakings, of never-agains and heretofores.If our instrument failed to take into account our context, it is very much like DNA that does not take into account the organism's environment: perpetually under threat, with extincion very much on the cards.

So therefore, this review process is our opportunity to restate our constitution. All conflict in a republic can be traced to a lack of consensus on what its constitution really said. This happens when the instrument utterly fails to recognise and incorporate the citizens' most fundamental expectations. Kenyans have been arguing with each other, it can be said. Even killing one another willy-nilly. A good, close and frank scrutiny of those premises, however, immediately disclose the fact that from Day One, Kenyans have been violently arguing and fighting what they rightly see as a fraudulent misstatement of the meaning and value of Uhuru, of who we are as a people, of what the hell we want to get up to of a good day, and what we want our government to get up to.The politicians have notoriously attempted to preserve mendacious power claims in the constitution, and ended up wrangling, and making a mad mangle of it. The citizens too have strongly expressed the view that putting down our constitution ought not have been perverted into the drafting of a political MoU with the departing colonists, and the creation of a new class of grabbers.It was supposed to be exactly what it was billed to be: constitution writing. Since that was not done, the Kenyan organism has been existentially challenged from birth, staggering from one opportunistic threat to another. And now, that document must be written.

Although it must comprise a fundamental departure from what we have today, it must always be borne in mind that we are not constituting the Republic of Kenya; we are only writing the constitution as it ought to have been written in the first place.

Having said so, we must bear in mind that a constitution, by its very nature, is not a housekeeping memo. It is the chief framework to underpin policy, legislation and programmes of action. A great mistake we make is to think that the constitution is a compendium of our entire body of laws. While understandable, the error manifestly impedes our ability to make rational and useful contributions to the review process. I must say, though, that hearing most politicians, the Church, Mungiki and the usual talking heads put in their two shillings and get their Mothers' Union into a frightful twist has been very entertaining. As I said earlier, a constitution will not raise us incorruptible. It will not make us better people. It will not make anything more or less pleasant. It simply states who we are. Our actions as public and private actors will, however, be subject to the scrutiny of the constitution. It will not tell us the water:cement:sand ratio, grazing territory of pastoralists, good maternity wards, the fate of lecherous assistant chiefs, diabolical street preachers and drunken pilots. Neither will it govern the goings and comings of Koinange Street patrons, office romances, the harvesting of honey or teachers' salaries. I hope you get my point.

The written document need not be clever and beautiful .It need not, for that matter, even be half clever. It only needs to be accurate. Honest. Scrupulous. Comprehensive. Like a statement of accounts. Or an auditor's report. Or a post mortem.Or a certificate of birth, passport, so forth. In case you have not noticed, it does not make reference to bouncing babies, gorgeous decedent, CSR compliant insolvent company, sad demise, birth to overjoyed parents, patriotic citizen of Kenya and so forth. So beware of effusive recitals of WHEREAS and other namby-pamby nonsense. Make sure that it is an honest document.

Please ensure that your benighted, probably insane, delirious, ridiculous and stupid input is received by the experts. They must listen to you, and you only. It is your instrument they are working on, and it is your darn country. Speak ye, then.

NB: I nearly forgot one little but useful tip. The mind plays tricks on us. Truth is only processable in the context of the familiar. That is why we talk about landmarks, benchmarks, beacons, formulae, etc. The familiar often determine whether at all, and if, then how easily we accept the new. However, in a situation where the familiar has plunged whole generations into dire straits, the new must be seen on its own merits, and not as a function of the usual, familiar, or the old. Historians argue that the muddled history of our country can be traced fairly accurately along the delineations of Kikuyu-Luo social and political fissures, and in three broad scenarios: Kenyatta/Odinga-(Mboya), Moi/Kibaki-Matiba-Odinga, Kibaki/Odinga,incorporating all manner of drama: rigging, coups, detention, referendum, mini-general election, whatnot. Because these shenanigans have so beset the national psyche, it might seem natural to see the draft constitution only in the light of recent contentions, and actually personify the greater offices.