By Kamotho Waiganjo

The debate on the rationalisation of constituency boundaries has quickly mutated from what was a rational reform debate to one with dangerous ethnic overtones. The ethno character of the debate includes allegations of conspiracies for dominance.

It is contaminated by the assertion that President Kibaki strategically kicked off the debate to intimidate the Interim Independent Boundary Reviews Commission (IIBRC).

What is conveniently forgotten is that during the national conference on electoral systems earlier this year, Prime Minister Raila Odinga in his key note address stressed the need to urgently rationalise constituency boundaries to undo the historical injustices produced by past gerrymandering.

He quoted statistics that showed how the colonial government allocated a disproportionate number of electoral units to Kadu areas to disenfranchise Kanu. Again, when the IIBRC visited Kisumu and Kakamega two weeks ago, the leadership in those regions complained that their constituency populations were too high and endorsed the concept of equality of the vote.

Why then the sudden frenzy of condemnation after central Kenya MPs called for the implementation of the same principle? It is important to remember that the proposal for equalising the vote was one of the primary recommendations of the Kriegler commission.

The commission identified several defects with our electoral system, among them the injustice of having an electoral body appointed solely by the president. Pursuant to the adoption of this report by Parliament, the Electoral Commission of Kenya was disbanded. The implementation of the equality of the vote principle merely continues the implementation of the commission’s report.

The fact that this issue has degenerated to the current level is tragic. It signals the loss of our capacity to interrogate issues on their merits without giving them an ethnic tag. What is even more worrying is that some of the loudest ethnizers of this debate include media activists and traditional proponents of human rights and democracy.

These are the persons who should be drawing to the nation’s attention that in older democracies that we aspire to, equality of the vote is studiously applied. Hence California with 34 million people and 50,000sqkm gets 53 congressmen whilst Alaska with 628,000 people and a landmass of a staggering 660,000sqkm gets only one congressman. New Jersey on the other hand with only 8,000sqkm gets 13 congressmen. Why, because its population is 8.4 million.

That is not to discount fears of majoritarian domination. These are legitimate and must be addressed. However dealing with such fears requires that in tempering democracy’s inadequacies, we do not strangle its basic foundations.

Options of tempering democracy’s extremes include legislating the allowable deviation so as to cater for geography whilst ensuring that such deviations only cater for sparsely populated areas. The current scenario where Taita District with four constituencies has the same population as Msambweni, a single constituency in the same province, is unjust and unacceptable.

It may include raising the absolute and regional threshold for winning the presidency so that the president is nationally acceptable. It may require re-introduction of the Senate as a Chamber that represents regional interests. It may include increasing the number of seats that are obtained through proportionate representation and ensuring that parties imbue diversity in their party lists.

The tenor that the debate has taken, where it is now popular to demonise a whole segment of the Kenyan population, must be condemned. The use of popular media to speak unapologetically about ‘the Kikuyu problem’ or for that matter "the Kalenjin problem" is reminiscent of seasons when such language birthed murderous bigotry.

This scenario can create a siege mentality and convert even ethnic agnostics to card carrying extremists.

Kenyans of goodwill must say no ethnicisation of critical national issues. If we Kenyans cannot entertain differences of opinion without labeling them tribal, then maybe we have no business purporting to be members of the family of emerging democracies.