A referendum campaign is now almost on its peak with just about a month to go before 4thAugust2010 when the country will go to the ballot voting by accepting or rejecting the proposed draft. The greens and reds are hard at work on the ground spreading their message. This has taken the headlines of major newspapers, radio and TV stations. Unlike in 2005 when the symbols of banana for YES and oranges for NO were playing a major role in the campaigns, this time round, the Green traffic light for YES and Red traffic light for NO seems to have been overshadowed by the real color names.
Referendum may only come ones and possibility of seeing another one after rejection of the draft for a second time is very slim and that could mean Kenyans will forget about the new constitution for possibly another century. We could be a country that still carries its Stone Age constitution to the modern and industrializing future. General elections recur after every five years for the public to make another choice for their leaders but not referendum. Any attempt to take the draft back for amendment would mean exposing it to mutilation by people with personal and selfish interests that would bring more confusion to Kenyans hence discarding the whole thing to the dust bin.
Constitution making is expensive, delicate and a near rocket science process that would mean bringing all opinionated political parties of Kenya to a consensus, conforming with individuals and public demands of different economic and literacy class as well as tribal, minorities and gender subjects. It would also mean bringing churches, Muslims, NGOs and foreign forces interest to a fair deal and agreement among an array of confusing matrices of striking balance to move forward during the challenging course. We laud the committee of experts (CoE) for having weathered this horrendous storm that shook Bomas to the ground that saw the 2005 proposed draft undergoing several metamorphosis from Bomas-Naivasha accord – Kilifi draft – to so called Wako draft hitting a wall because the final copy of the draft never reflected the original version of the public plea but of those in power then. We saw billions of shillings factored in this exercise and it will be insane to trash the document after tax payer’s money having been spent that heavily.
Currently we are talking of 3 contentious issues (Huge chunks of idle private land, Kadhi courts and abortion clauses), but when we will make a mistake of rejecting the draft for further amendments, I will also have my own opinion to make leave alone the MPs because we know they have more than 180 problems for amendments that they failed to table in parliament when they lacked majority vote to take the draft back for further probing. This will open the draft to 40 million Kenyans and interested foreigners for further scrutiny that will derail the focus of the 3 contentious issues mutilating the draft and that will be the end of the road to a new constitution in the near future. We will remain with status quo and the gap of the rich and the poor will continue to be galactic. Unlike general elections where we wait for five years to punish our underperforming leaders by replacing them with new ones, the referendum is unlikely to come that soon and for the current case, the government will be tired and forget about it because of cost implications.
AMENDMENTS
It is sad that many friends and opinionated people don’t understand that we have what we call ‘AMENDMENTS’. If anyone is afraid that there will be know option of correcting or enhancing the constitution where necessary after it passes in the oncoming referendum, then you are at the dark and mistaken. If for example the issue of abortion will be abused by women by bribing doctors to sign a certificate of abortion by faking that a pregnancy was putting a woman’s life at risk, then a concerned MP will rise up and present a bill to ban abortion to the speaker’s office. From there the bill will be tabled in house and debated after which there will be voting by MPs. If the bill wins majority votes from MPs, the president will have to append his signature soon after the bill passes on the floor of the house to make it a law and the abortion clause will be modified to reflect the passed bill ‘banning it’. This will be the same for any other clauses that would bring friction to people’s life. Our constitution shall also grow depending with times and the challenges we undergo in future. If in future the whole of Africa get united and form United States of Africa, then if that clause of integration doesn’t exist, it will be added through the legal process of parliament.
CURRENT CHALLENGES
As you can see from the previous article ‘SAMBURU COUNTY GOVERNMENT’, there will be reduction of poverty by inter-stellar margins. By comparing a budget of Kshs 160M to 3.4 B per year, you get a sigh of relief. Let us not be selfish by thinking that those who would be close to power will benefit, but if so, there will be trickling effect that would still reach to the bottommost poor.
Take an example of the recent floods of Seiya River that claimed about 13 lives in just one week. If you go to our council at the moment pushing the clerk to construct a link or bridge across the river, the first thing you will here is that there is no money. That tourism was low and we had no returns and our budget of Kshs 100M has a deficit of Kshs 27M and waiting for local authority transfer fund (LATF) which is only Kshs 9M.
If you go to DCs office in the office of District roads Engineer under the ministry of roads and public works, you will be told according to the budget we are operating in, there is no money for doing that unless you wait for next year’s budget and for your case to be factored in you need Permanent Secretary’s approval and you get referred to Nairobi. When you get to Nairobi seeing the PS, getting appointment only . . . takes you a week. When you later succeed to see him and narrate stories about Samburu, he just doesn’t click or figure out what you are talking about. Because the PS was a son of a rich minister in Kenyatta’s government and studied in US and Japan all his life and the pictures he sees is underground train tunnel, 8 lanes super highway, coffee at McDonalds and here you are struggling to talk about the Samburu who drinks blood because there is no enough milk, a bridge in Lolkuniani in the semi arid desert of hopelessness damn it the PS start asking where do Samburu live in Isiolo? At the end of the day you get a wide berth and the suffering of the people continue. This is what our desperate MPs undergo.
OUR BENEFITS
Think of Samburu county government with kshs 3.4B! And let us continue taking the example of Seiya River. If a councilor of Seiya area takes a group of elders from his community and summons the governor in his office in Maralal county hall, and present their plea for bridge construction which will only cost Kshs 5M and takes 4 months to complete , the governor will understand what they are talking about. He will even go out with them visiting the scene and immediately put the right tools into work. The following week you will see a constructor and project underway.
WHY? Because a governor is a son or daughter of Samburu, s/he knows what an old Samburu lady or man undergoes as well as Samburu women, morans and school children. Any plea forwarded to him, s/he will picture it right and know what best to do to solve our problems. With enough disposal of money, we can have our Canaan. The governor will build Samburu, school our children and the future will start taking care of itself.
Many unemployed people will be directly or indirectly secure vacancies slots that will come with more funding to our county government. Since our budget will grow more than 22 times, the current staff under the payroll of our county council will also grow by bigger margins about 15 times or more and counting. The employment pattern will span the whole county not just in Maralal only. Contractors from various sectors of economy be it construction, IT, External editors, environmentalists name it will get more business at home than in any other place in the country. Those workers that feel are laid upon in Nairobi and in any other towns of the country will finally find their place at home.
Samburu will be lucky because we only have about 300,000 people in population with may be three constituencies in future and getting the same allocation of money like for example Meru county government with 1.3 million people with about 6 constituencies. That is where our luck is. That means we will benefit about five times than a Merian in Meru County.
ESTIMATION OF DEVELOPMENT FUNDING FROM CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
County Government Kshs 3.2 B
County Government Revenues Kshs 200M
3 constituencies with an average of Kshs 200M CDF = Kshs 600M
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Average total Kshs 4 B per year
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The choice is yours, JISOMEE, JIAMULIE kicha JICHAGULIE
Thanks
Tom Lolosoli
Secretary
SEDF
