By Kiratu Kamunya
A sensational claim which is gaining ground and therefore needs to be checked is that the Office of the President is on an all-out war against the governors elected by the people by imposing county commissioners on the people against their wish since as they allege, these are not elected representatives of the people.
Governors have as a result been advised to fight back and reclaim their territory which is under invasion by the national government through the office of the president! This is both unfortunate and misleading.
It is unfortunate because the proponents of this crusade seem oblivious of the distinct roles prescribed for the counties on the one hand and the national government on the other in the 4th schedule of the Constitution! For starters, devolution of resources to the counties was not meant to create small countries within the Republic of Kenya with full autonomy and the character of state.
National government continues to play a fundamental role in matters of national governance especially administration and security.
Devolution must not be mistaken with secession!
As President Kibaki has put it, Kenya is still a unitary state with 47 devolved units for purposes of disseminating resources but not necessarily raw political power.
The underlying message is that devolution was not an attempt to empower the governors and turn them into county monarchs but to empower the people in decision making in access to resources and management.
If one were to acknowledge implications of the National Government Co-ordination Act which creates the county commissioners, they cannot go ahead to rubbish the County Commissioners as being in office illegally and term them a creation of the OP. It is instructive that the Act in question was enacted by the 10th Parliament with full mandate from the Kenyan people as their representatives.
Office of the President does not enact laws in this country.
Enemy of the people?
On its part, Parliament was simply fulfilling its Constitutional mandate of restructuring the provincial administration to accord with and to respect the county system of governance.
Parliament’s brief did not extended to abolishing the provincial administration as that would have been grossly unConstitutional. In this regard, the Constitution is alive to the fact that co-ordination of national administration and security is very critical to matters of governance both at the county and the national level!
In any event, the national government consists of elected representatives of the people who legitimately exercise the mandate conferred on them for the national welfare. To view the OP as the enemy of the people is consequently misplaced. After all, governors are elbowing each other in seeking public recognition by flying the National flag not County flags.
The idea of devolution is two pronged. It encompasses equitable distribution of resources across the country while conferring the decision on utilisation of those resources on the Governor and his team in consultation with the people through their elected representatives at the county assembly. It does not entail a complete break from the national government.
Matters of co-ordination of national administration and security at the County level are still the reserve of national government with an oversight by the elected representatives of the people at the National Assembly.
In other words, as the people desire equitable distribution of resources, so do they desire a well co-ordinated approach to security and administration across the country.
In the end, it is not a question of one over the other but having both of them concurrently and interdependently.
To hold otherwise would be a recipe for unnecessary tension and conflict between governors and county commissioners and by extension chiefs and their deputies at the location level. This does not bode well for the smooth running of counties by the Governors and effective delivery of services to their people.
Respective roles of county governments and the national government are complementary under the Constitution. The two are interdependent on a wide array of issues and can never be completely independent of each other. County commissioners should not therefore be viewed as obstructionist or as encroaching on the domain of county governments.
While there is need to accommodate the Governors in suitable offices, evicting the County Commissioners is not the solution. It can even be argued that Governors are actually encroaching on the domain of national administration.
But County Commissioners have been magnanimous enough to cede space for governors operations on a negotiated basis since both offices exist as a matter of law and for the service of the people.
The actual solution will be to secure more resources either from the national government allocations or self-generated wealth by the counties and then deploying them to create new while expanding existing offices.
Fighting over available but scarce resources will only entrench the sense of entitlement while sparking a vicious war between the national and county governments.
This in the end will give rise to stagnation of service delivery! Governors and County Commissioners are legitimate children of the same Constitution!
The writer is a lawyer with Maina Ngaruiya Advocates.
