PSC Sowing Seeds of Discord Again

We have been here before. In 2005, there was a big retreat in Naivasha where the then Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) agreed on what was christened the Naivasha Accord. This document was a mutilation of the Bomas Draft Constitution, as had been agreed by majority of the delegates at National Constitutional Conference, between 2003 and 2004. At that Conference, Kenyans were resolute in the quest for a new order, but the politicians took away the ‘baby and threw it away with the bath water’. When they arrived in Nairobi, they had changed not only the draft but also their positions.

If the media reports being filed by national media houses are true, or close to what is going on in Naivasha, every Kenyan must be prepared for a bomber. If the recommendations to remove institutions that defend human rights, those that protect teachers or those that protect public land from the Revised Harmonized Draft, then we must be very wary. If the equality and non-discrimination provisions and the bill of rights have been interfered with, we should be very afraid. If PSC has overstepped their mandate, then we must be ready to salvage this process.

But we have been here before. How would you entrust wolves to protect your sheep? As the genius Albert Einstein often remarked: “lunacy is the ability to do the same thing over and over again but expect different results”. Kenyans must wake up to the reality that the real enemies of the Kenya’s search for new systems and structures are some few people they elected and shed blood for in the chaotic 2007 elections. Of course, other enemies behind the scenes are real interests of shadowy business elite; corrupt and callous class of political speculators; and of course, the big transnational and multinational companies that milk Kenya dry.

So, as many Kenyans would ask: “what is the way forward?” We propose five options: first, let us await the report of the PSC and read it. The report should be out by end of this week. We must interrogate it, and prepare for a serious battle with the PSC if they have recommended mutilation of the Draft. Second, we must take the bold step and state from the rooftops that our country should and must be run on the principle of rule of law. The law, Constitution of Kenya Review Act, only asked PSC to build consensus on contentious issues. Thus, since the Committee of Experts (CoE) identified four issues (executive, devolution, legislature and transition), where some aspects are also contained in areas such as public finance and some schedules, the PSC had no business opening up areas that did not have contention such as bill of rights, land or proposing deletion of constitutional commissions.

Third, we should visit the offices of the CoE with thousands of memoranda instructing them to disregard whatever PSC did that falls outside their mandate. Indeed, the CoE work seems to have been taken over by PSC. Who asked PSC to write a new constitution for us? No one! That must be stated categorically. Fourth, the CoE, unlike the defunct Constitution of Kenya Review Commission (CKRC), must be ready to take these public memoranda and use the law to defend their draft. The law is on their side, and they should not waive this opportunity to speak truth to power.

Finally, we propose that Kenyans from all corners of this country engage the entire August House, from the moment CoE redrafts the Final Draft for submission to the full House. Political and national battles are won if the people who stand to gain from a new order agree that some few people cannot take over a national project of all Kenyans and plunge it into chaos as we watch. Already, there is simmering conflict amongst many groups who stand to loose from what PSC is supposedly proposing. Those groups must of necessity agree to have a common enemy, and as we overthrew the KANU regime in 2002, we must exercise our sovereign power and tell Parliament that they have only one option: to agree with what we hold dear. Let us stand on the rooftops and declare Kenya is ours, for our next generation, and all persons are equal as we march towards the new order.

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Tom Kagwe, J. P.