Don’t let boundary disputes derail the reform train

The storm raised by the disagreement among members of the Andrew Ligale commission, and the subsequent posturing by different politicians, has inevitably raised substantial heat and anxiety.

Naturally, politicians will take sides for or against Ligale depending on whether they think their areas have benefited or lost out. The challenge to leadership is the logic of arguments used to defend the positions taken.

But beyond scoring points in this new controversy, we need to assess what potential impact it may have on fulfilling the pending reform agenda prior to the next elections.

When parliamentarians were haggling over the chapter on representation in the constitutional talks at Naivasha, MPs from central Kenya were the loudest proponents of fair representation.

They agreed with the observation by the Kriegler Commission that the principle of equitable representation should be the guiding light in delineating constituencies.

That other variables like the difference between urban and rural areas, or semi-arid and densely populated areas, were secondary.

ODM-leaning MPs raised the alarm that this was another central Kenya ploy to have too many seats in the new Parliament. Hence their push for the so-called one kilometre one vote campaign.

Though partially watered down, the fair representation argument found its way into the Constitution. It is one of the positives about this document.

The nature and size of electoral units should never be left to the total discretion of the commissioners reviewing boundaries.

The type of arguments deployed for the grandstanding are interesting. The claim that the exercise is flawed because not all stakeholders were consulted is least impressive.

Boundary reviews are not constitutional referenda. Nobody can expect all citizens to express an opinion before decisions are made.
The Ligale team has significant gaps in its armour.

But lack of consultation is not one of them. Those opposing Ligale because their areas have few new constituencies should embrace one fact. If you support a constitutional principle, you must be ready to live with its logical consequences.

It does not become wrong to seek fair representation just because statistics show that you are actually well represented.

On the other had, Ligale’s use of population is one of the team’s major weaknesses. How do we use numbers for North Eastern whose veracity has been questioned by the very people who carried out the census?

Put another way, since the Ministry of Planning renounced the census figures for much of North Eastern, what numbers informed the allocations in that area? This may be the basis of the complaints emerging from Upper Eastern.

The Ligale team had an opportunity to reduce the excesses of gerrymandering that informed past boundary reviews. To do this they could stand above the constituency and consider each county as the unit within which to discern the new constituencies.

This way, particularly tiny constituencies like Mvita would gain additional people re-districted from neighbouring constituencies.

By confining themselves to carving new units exclusively out of existing ones, they wasted this opportunity.

It is precisely this failure to break the mould of old constituencies that has created the very legitimate concerns of Beth Mugo.
On what basis could Langata be divided into three units while Dagoretti remained one?

They could have treated Nairobi county as one unit and recreated constituencies using the principle of fairness they claim to espouse. This method could also have lowered the protests coming from places like Malava in Western.

Beyond scoring points in this heated confrontation, it is important to emphasise the impact it may have on the entire reform process. Parliament is currently faced with a very daunting legislative menu.

This requires unusually high consensus to work through. The partisan tension deriving from the boundary debate is fouling the environment for this critical work.

One of the benefits of a democratic transition is supposed to be the ability to amicably deal with competition with limited recourse to conflict.

The way political leaders are escalating their competition for constituencies into a partisan and pseudo-ethnic competition represents a retreat into the pre-modern cocoons that have fuelled the embers of hate and distrust in the past.

This runs the risk of delaying critical reform legislation and keeping the promise of the democratic bonus we expected when we overwhelmingly voted for a new Constitution.

Dr Mukhisa Kituyi is a former minister for Trade and Industry. He is a Director of the Kenya Institute of Governance. [email protected]