Commentaries
Constitutional Review Need Not Divide Nation
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- Published on Saturday, 07 July 2007 08:42
Recently, we have witnessed very disheartening developments in this important exercise concerning the future of our nation. Unnecessary suspicion and misunderstandings have ensued as a result of the conduct of this debate by certain sections of the country's political leadership.
In and out of Parliament, for example, the opinions of others have been misunderstood as a result of which some leaders have been unfairly vilified and demonised. On the other hand, sections of the political establishment have made efforts to single out one community for vilification and isolation. This self- defeatist effort has seen some politicians pour vitriol and venom on one community blaming and almost cursing it for allegedly having a secret agenda in the review debate.
Going through the Hansard, which is an accurate report of the deliberations of the House, and a critical perusal of the Raila Odinga-led Parliamentary Select Committee report, one notices that the innuendoes and insinuations about a community that takes advantage of its numerical strength is a very thinly covered reference to the Kikuyu community.
The most absurd aspect of this bizarre political spectacle is that even inside Parliament, respected religious leaders have had their families dragged into the debate merely because they happen to be Kikuyus .I was particularly saddened by the malicious attack on one of the prominent leaders of the Ufungamano initiative who was accused of succumbing to the influence of his Kikuyu wife. This, truly, is a very unfortunate state of affairs.
The efforts to vilify one community are essentially a diversionary and expedient measure meant to either cow or intimidate the community on the one hand while on the other blackmail the others into supporting an othervise self- serving method of going about the review of the Constitution. The vilification and name calling of the religious leaders in the country is apparently meant to serve the same purpose.
The Kikuyus are being used here as a scapegoat. Kenyans should be reminded that this government has always played the ethnic card whenever it is in a crisis. This is often meant to galvanise coerced support from the rest of the country. Anytime the Kanu establishment flashes the "Kikuyu taking power syndrome", the rest of the country is expected to panic into throwing its support behind the KANU establishment. This is a retrogressive strategy. It amounts to giving a human face to an individual or group of individuals' wicked design to cling on to power.
The trend of the debate leaves one wondering whether the overt tribally motivated thinking such as being displayed in Parliament can be trusted to foster a spirit of unity and mutual trust that is fundamental to the success of the constitutional review process.
The truth of the matter is that the Kikuyu, like all citizens of this country have an inalienable right to make their contribution to the constitutional review as much as the Mijikenda, Rendille, Borana or any other community. The intermediation based on the numerical politics and the false threat of one community 'taking power' (whatever this means ) is as baseless as it is part of the empty theatrics of a divide-and-rule elite that the ruling pary and its co-operating handlers are proving to be.
In any event Kenyans now know that suspicion and propaganda are Kanu's most commonly used tools of amassing political power. The ruling party is trading the Kikuyu phobia for intermediated support.
The anger that is directed towards the faiths-led initiative at Ufungamano can also be understood in the same light. The religious groups and the civil society brought together by the Ufungamano initiative have, first and foremost, as much a right to discuss the Constitution as have the rest of us in Parliament.
Secondly, it is utter nonsense to argue that no one else has the legitimacy to play a leading role in the constitutional review exercise other than Parliament especially after we sat together with these groups at the Bomas of Kenya and at the Safari Park meetings.
That Parliament is refusing to recognise these stakeholders is pretentious and cheap. A chronology of events exposes the selfishness of those arguing for the exclusion of the civil society and religious leaders. Right from Bomas of Kenya, all of us MPs and civil society sat together and deliberated on the constitutional review.
The Constitution of Kenya Review Act 1998 is, in fact, a product of a joint effort led by Bishop John Sulumeti. Some of the fierce critics of the involvement of civil society in the review were members of Sulumeti's committee.
After Sulumeti's committee report was accepted by all stakeholders, it was taken to Parliament by the Attorney-General, debated by Parliament and passed. The President, who now has big ideas about Parliament's sovereignty, assented the Bill and it became law.
It is actually when the political parties disagreed on the number of commissioners each would appoint to the Review Commission that the current stalemate ensued.
It should be incumbent upon those leaders opposed to the inclusion of civil society and the religious leaders to explain to the Kenyan people their lapsed reasoning on the group's involvement in the constitutional review.
At least even those in Parliament who are opposed to an inclusive review of the Constitution need to relate to the country where they forgot the supremacy of Parliament at the time we were all sitting at Safari Park.
Besides I have always argued that it is unrealistic to imagine that out of about 28 million Kenyans, only the 222 Members of Parliament have the brains and experience to lead the constitutional review process. After all even the 222 MPs are unable to agree.
In fact, when we talk of Parliament dealing with the Constitutional review, we are only talking of a section of Parliament. What is going on in the House is an effort to deny our people the right to meaningfully participate in the review by insisting that everything about the process should be decided by the House.
To illustrate my point, I need to point out that the Raila PSC report was adopted in Parliament with less than 100 MPs out of the sitting 222. If this number was to be translated to reflect the population of the country represented by those who voted for the adoption of the report, one can very easily notice that less than half of the country was represented by this view.
It is instructive to note that the existent suspicion on the role of various groups of people in the constitutional review process had been moderated by the Safari Park initiative. There is a lot to be gained from working together in this matter of the constitutional review. All suspicion would be alleviated if all groups were working together openly and consulting one another consistently.
It is pretentious on the part of the ruling party to expect mutual trust to reign in the constitutional review process when they themselves are not honest, open and respectful of the feelings of the general public. The party instead continues to do everything in secrecy, contempt and to the exclusion of the people on the excuse that they are in power.
I will repeat what I consider the fundamental principle in this review process; there is no way we will move forward if we do not moderate tribal, sectional and short-term power-driven ambition. We can only move forward if we are united as a nation.
The most intriguing aspect of this debate is the fact that the leadership that is so hell bent on promoting hate, tribalism and sectional interests, pretentiously preaches water every day while it consumes lots of wine.
The extreme feelings and hate we are now experiencing are a replica of the colonial experience whereby the British government sought to play the anti and pro-British rule groups of Kenyans against each other. When it seemed that Independence was inevitable, the British divided Kenyans with the so called "small tribes" like the Kalenjin, Mijikenda, Taita etc being threatened and intimidated that the "big tribes"; the Kikuyus, Luos, Kambas, etc, would outmaneuver them in the political leadership of the post independence period.
Intense suspicion ensued the result of which was a conglomeration of the 'small tribes' in a political party called Kenya African Democratic Union (Kadu), waging an opposition to Kanu, the party that was perceived to be the harbour of the 'big tribes.'
Although after independence, efforts were made to unite the people of Kenya and Kadu was dissolved to pave way for a united political establishment, it would appear that getting together as political parties did not erase the intense ethnic suspicion and hatred among Kenyan politicians.
Soon we witnessed the exit of Oginga Odinga from the mainstream of political dispensation. Then politics became very costly to the country with the assassinations and strange deaths of Tom Mboya, Argwings Kodhek, Ronald Ngala, J.M. Kariuki, Pio Gama Pinto, etc.
It would appear that even after 37 years of independence, we are still bedeviled by this intractable malaise of tribal hatred and suspicion. We are actually headed for an intensely divided country going by the utterances one hears in this environment in the succession debate.
There are individuals who will pass for leaders whose only contribution in the succession debate is the tribal identity of Moi's successor. One often hears very amazing arguments like "the Kikuyus and Kalenjins have had their chance so let the next leader come from this or that community", "it is the turn of our tribe to eat" and so on and so forth. This is backward and primitive politics.
If we would like to move forward as a nation and achieve development, let alone setting a base for sustained growth, we must avoid basing our political views and perceptions of leadership on tribes. An ethnic community one comes from does not make one a good or bad leader. There is no known contribution of one's tribe to one's individual capacity to deliver.
Likewise therefore, the mundane and irrational consideration of ethnic numbers should be a thing of the past in an environment that should be interested in the development of democracy and the Rule of Law.
We must find a way of accepting one another and dealing with the challenges of our nation collectively regardless of our ethnicity. Our people of Kenya need, through intense civic education, to be equipped with a strong sense of nationhood that will encourage them to choose leaders only on grounds of competence, not their ethnic background or their wealth or religion.
At any rate, we have paid dearly for choosing leaders on the basis of all sorts of undemocratic and ingenious criteria. Even as parties proliferate the political landscape, we need to appreciate the fact that they will not guarantee democracy. We must make it a deliberate effort to encourage unity and find ways of running the country together.
At this point in time, the seed we must now sow so that we can begin to work together is that of taking a united approach to the issue at hand - the constitutional review. Even as MPs, we need to know that in other environments in the Commonwealth like in Australia, and Canada, important national matters like that of the Constitution are not merely deliberated on by the Legislature alone.
They are referred to the people through a referendum to be decided by the entire population. We do not have a provision for a referendum in our present Constitution. However, we should, in good faith, work out a very accommodative and broad-based involvement of our people in the constitutional review. We should never be blinded by the mere fact that we elected representatives of the people.
All told however, it is vital to remember that our founding fathers did not envisage a Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luo, Luhyia, Kamba Mijikenda, Kisii or Boran country. They fought for independence so that we could have a nation called Kenya. National debate on our future such as the one on the Constitution should not divide us at all. It should instead unite us and give us a chance to appreciate our inevitable common destiny.
*Mr. Nyachae is a former Minister for Finance and the Kanu MP for Nyaribari Chache.
