By Anyang’ Nyong’o
If there is one principle that is cardinal in the Constitution today it is the principle of equality, followed by that of equity and finally freedom or liberty. In the Bill of Rights, these principles are captured under the concept of individual and people’s rights. In other words, such rights would make no sense in the day-to-day lives of Kenyans if there were no equity in the way Government is formed, the way it conducts its work and the manner it authoritatively allocates values.
Nor would such rights make sense if all citizens, as individuals and as people or communities, did not enjoy them equally and without any sense of coercion, ideological terror, blackmail or fear mongering.
The Constitution has provided some framework for setting up institutions that seek to guarantee that individuals and communities enjoy these rights “as by law established” or under the rule of law. In other words, the existence of laws and institutions that seek to implement these laws is not the end of enjoying these rights; it is a means to enjoying these rights. These rights must not only be enjoyed; they must be seen to be enjoyed.
This point is important particularly with regard to the making and unmaking of executive power in Kenya since independence.
The cumulative concentration of executive power in the hands of one institution and one person since independence is what led to the emergence of what I have elsewhere called a “presidential authoritarian regime” in Kenya.
This regime, under former Presidents Kenyatta and Moi and now President Kibaki, systematically undermined the cardinal principles of equity, equality and liberty in our lives, and eventually made a near total mockery of individual and peoples right.
Kibaki has fortunately presided over a momentous transition from authoritarianism to democracy, a process that is still a work in progress.
But Kenyans run the danger of jeopardising this transition by the way we are just about to establish executive power through presidential elections next year.
If indeed the manner in which executive power has been made since independence through semi competitive elections led to the using of State power inequitably in the process of development among Kenyan communities, to what extent are we bound to perpetuate this inequity if we do not rotate the presidency among Kenyan communities?
Why are we fearful of asking this question and interrogating it democratically? This question, asked within the context of our Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the cardinal principle of equity makes a lot of sense.
The people of Kenya have a right to feel they are taken into account in the making of democratic executive power as opposed to an authoritarian presidency.
If in the past the authoritarian presidency has left them out, the democratic presidency must bring them in for the principle of equity to make meaning in their lives as individuals and peoples endowed with inalienable rights under the constitution.
Those who argue on political platforms that the presidency is not the preserve of two communities are not being tribal; they simply want the principle of equity to be practiced in the making of executive power so that all Kenyan communities and regions feel included. This underlines the principle of inclusion rather than exclusion.
This underscores the principle of participation rather than passive observation and vicarious enjoyment of other people’s participation as a result of fear, blackmail, coercive persuasion or ideological terror.
I do believe we shall be more faithful to the implementation of the Constitution if we become serious and positive about the politics of inclusion in the making of executive power during this first election following the promulgation of the Constitution in August 2010.
That of course assumes that major actors in the politics of executive formation through competitive elections believe in the Constitution and its implementation; a proposal which, of course, from historical experience as well as ideological inclination, may be dubitable with reference to certain players.
Be that as it may, arguments for the politics of inclusion, hence the rotation of the presidency among the Kenyan nationalities from one election to the other should not be delegitimised as tribal; it essentially champions the politics of people’s rights.
That does not, however, mean that the presidency must, ipso facto, circulate among all the 42 nationalities from one election to the other.
This in practice is near impossible. But the rotation principle should, by tradition, help institutionalise democratic participation rather than delegitimise it.
The essence of the argument, further, is that the presidency should not circulate only among one or two nationalities, thereby institutionalising the politics of exclusion under the guise of majoritarian rule.
This argument goes a long way to point out the extent to which the re-election of Barack Obama is likely to play a highly significant role in national integration in the US after hundreds of years of racial segregation under majoritarian democracy and competitive presidential elections.
Email: anyongo@yahoo.com
