The purpose of fresh legislation or even revising existing laws is to make it more relevant, avoid unnecessary conflict, put a stopper on leakage of public funds, and allowing for all actors to operate under one set of laws and parameters.
Anything short of this is equivalent to throwing the citizenry under the bus and disrespecting their right to a better life. Citizens, therefore leave it to experts and/or elected members of the National Assembly or constitutional commissions. That is not a licence to try new things and experiment with the lives of taxpayers. Remember, amateurs built Noah’s Ark, while experts built the Titanic.
This reasoning is what will inform our fair comment on the row over the Constituency Development Fund, pitting MPs against governors, the Constitution Implementation Commission, (CIC) and Kenyans at large. The CDF was a central government’s way of decentralising financial resources to the grassroots so that the public could have a direct input into what constituted priorities in development. Hailed as historic and practical, it has been the focus of study by other countries that seek to replicate it or borrow from the model.
Sadly, one audit after another indicates that MPs used it to settle scores with political foes, and used it as a slush fund to reward family and cronies. However, where the fund was properly used, peoples’ lives were revolutionised, lending further support for a devolved system of government.
And now that Kenya has successfully adopted the desired devolved governance structure, it is disheartening that a few new legislators and some carryovers from the Tenth Parliament want to amend the CDF Act to allow themselves greater control over the CDF. But, like the CIC argued in a full page advertorial yesterday, this would be unconstitutional, a betrayal of the reasoning behind devolution. It would negate the need for county CEOs in the name of governors who are meant to handle the day-to-day affairs of their counties.
Devolution did not envisage legislators circumventing the county planning and budgeting teams, thereby duplicating roles and wasting the precious little development funds availed to counties.
The clamour to increase the amount alloted to the CDF was meant to spur economic growth and social development in readiness with the bigger role counties shall have in determining their developmental priorities. It is now emerging that proponents of the CDF Act 2013 were preparing the way for their return to office as county chiefs to manage this poorly-policed cash cow.
However, greater vigilance afforded by the new political dispensation has left most functions and positions of authority operating in full public glare like goldfish as they stand to be surcharged.
Of course governors will be happy to see MPs’ attempt to encroach on their turf defeated and this could be the beginning of the Senate’s moment to shine as they ensure some laws are stopped in their tracks even before the ink has dried.
It would be tragic to see the negative traits of unashamed raiding of the county treasury, meaning Kenyans will just have devolved all the negative traits of the old order.
As the President promised in his address to Parliament two days ago: “Mechanisms for resolving the minor administrative challenges are already in place because my Government is committed to devolution in full.”
The Head of State and the CIC must, therefore, ensure unscrupulous characters and spurious legislation do not derail the national agenda for the greater good that the supreme law promises.
