The Constitution Kenyans Want

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Recent pronouncements by politicians on both sides of the Kenyan coalition government has thrown the constitution debate into a fresh spin. While everyone agrees that there is a need for a new constitution to address past governance inadequacies and provide a modern goverance framework, a time-table as to how and when we will have a new constitution has not been forthcoming from our political leadership. Listening to both Deputy Prime Ministers Mudavadi and Uhuru recently, the debate has been reduced to political shadow boxing and contests as to which side is 'more' serious with the implementation of a new constitution.

But i will surprise you today. None in the political class is keen on implementing a new constitution. The current constitution provides 'real' power to the executive arm of the government and any politician or aspiring politician salivates at the prospect of execising such powers. Winning the presidency under the current constitution is the trophy every politician seeks to bag. That is why i promise you that we are in for a long ride.

A new constitution will be a major coup for the majority of Kenyans. It is envisaged that a new constitution will transfer power of governance from the political elite to the normal wananchi (citizens). The question i have been asking myself is whether there is a way for the us as citizens to come up with our own draft constitution and then prevail upon the government to adopt it.

The purpose of this blog is to invite fellow Kenyans and wellwishers to contribute ideas that we can use to draft a new constitution. The politicians have deliberately slowed down this process and it will be dangerous for us to continue waiting for them. I will not be surprised if we go for the 2012 elections with the current constitution.

But first i think we start with what we have and what we know. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We have the Bomas draft and also Naivasha/Kilifi drafts. We know that both drafts are acceptable to most people to the extent of around 80%. Our work here will be to identify the 20% in both drafts that is acceptable by some people and not acceptable by others. Using this process, we will be able to merge both drafts and come up with one that is acceptable by the majority of Kenyans.

My suggestion is that we start with either of the drafts, publish the contents of each chapter, we debate the contents of the chapter for around one week, then i will publish what has been agreed by the majority of contributors as the final content of the chapter. Once we complete one draft we move to the next, but chapters tackled in the previous draft are not debated again. After completing debate on both, we will then move to possible ommissions from both drafts. We will then be in a position to do our final draft.

What do you think?