Party caucuses ignored in referendum debate

Nairobi; Kenya: Political parties have ignored the opinion of their members in the referendum debate and demanded they stick to positions taken by coalition and party leaders.

The two Majority Leaders of the Jubilee coalition Adan Duale (National Assembly) and Kindiki Kithure (Senate) have been categorical that the “Jubilee position” is to oppose the referendum. Therefore, they have put their elected members who are supporting the referendum on notice: Drop it or lose your seats.

“We have said we don’t support the referendum. If you are our governor and you have closed ranks with CORD to demand a referendum, you have denounced Jubilee,” Kindiki warned last weekend.

“You cannot join CORD in their push to commit the country to a referendum. There is only one referendum and it is CORD’s. We will not allow you.” Duale said.

The CORD leadership led by Raila Odinga has, however, taken a more cautious approach and said it cannot coerce its elected leaders to support the referendum.

Still, questions are being asked about how CORD mooted such a grand idea of a referendum without passing it through the National Delegate’s Conference (NDC) of individual parties.

Ordinarily, NDCs are the top decision-making organs of most political parties. The National Executive Council (NEC) is the executing arm of the party. Historically, key decisions like choosing presidential candidates or changing party constitution are done by the NDC.

“There has generally been consensus among our leadership that there is need to amend the Constitution to safeguard certain interests. This has been demonstrated especially by our elected leaders, all whom support the idea in principle,” ODM Executive Director Magerer Lang’at told The Standard on Sunday.

For CORD, Lang’at says, the referendum drive is a process. There is consensus even among those CORD leaders opposed to the referendum that the Constitution needs to be amended.

“The consensus on the need to amend the katiba is there. However, the majority prefer the public referendum route for fear of Jubilee’s majority in Parliament,”  he said.

CORD’s drive to collect one million signatures is designed force through a people’s petition for a referendum that bypasses Parliament in which Jubilee has the majority.

Unyielding position

Lang’at says CORD has not taken an unyielding position on the referendum as compared to Jubilee. He described  Jubilee’s purported position as “a position of sycophants.”

“We all know their coalition has never met since election. When did they come up with this position? The sycophants in the coalition simply want to gag their members unlike our coalition where we have a broad consensus on the principle behind the push,” he said.

TNA chairman Johnson Sakaja says his party held a National Governing Council in which all elected leaders attended and took a “party position”. He, however, agrees there is a structural problem on arriving at a “coalition position.”

“Our coalition does not have a NGC like our party does. It’s more of an informal arrangement. I believe our coalition partners URP must have done the same. Their position combined with ours would make the coalition position,” Sakaja said.

He said moving forward, Jubilee would formally set up its Unity Council— the top decision-making organ for the coalition — and Jubilee Advisory Council. He said before that, it should be assumed that the “coalition position” on matters of national importance is the one pronounced by its leadership.

URP Secretary General Fred Muteti is, however, much more categorical that positions taken by the coalition leaders amount to coalition positions: “You work for The Standard Group yourself. If your CEO takes a position on a matter, is it not The Standard Group’s position? If the President and his deputy, the leaders of Jubilee, have come out in public to state their position on the referendum, this is obviously the coalition position.”

Muteti said TNA and URP have their own system of internal consultations. He said that as far as URP is concerned, the position is clear: “We in URP have consulted and we have said we cannot support a referendum. We are not ruling out support for a referendum in the future though. Our position has been ably postulated by our party leader.”

Muteti did not, however, state when the meetings to discuss the referendum were held and by which party organs. He reiterated Kindiki’s resolve to kick out governors supporting the referendum.

He said decisions or policies taken by political parties must be respected by the membership otherwise democracy will become a mockery.

“Trust me, we will kick them out. The Political Parties Act is very clear that the moment one starts to support programmes or policies of a different party they are deemed to have resigned. They (rebel governors) know it very well... we will strike them out,” he said. However, governors had pushed to have their own referendum which is not in any way aligned to CORD’s and Muteti did not spell out how they would deal with such governors.

According to Wiper Executive Director Brig (Rtd) Henry Rop, the party took its position at a recent party Parliamentary Group cum National Executive Council. He said the party had resolved to keep the NDC out of the referendum because it is a constitutional issue.

“We consult NDC on other matters but not this particular one. Our view is that no organ within our party can fight an idea which is ingrained in the Constitution. The idea of the referendum is the people’s idea. We consult them at the actual referendum,” Rop said.

Constitutional right

He, however,  criticised Jubilee for reading the riot act to  its member who support a plebiscite. He said no single document under the sun, be it Political Parties Act, party manifestos, or policies can stop a right enshrined in the Constitution.

“The interpretation of the pronouncements we have heard from the Jubilee leaders is that of dictatorship. One person or two have made the decision for Jubilee. They have never met as a coalition or individual parties to the best of our knowledge,” Rop said.

The chairman of Centre for Multi-party Democracy, Mr Omingo Magara, says parties must respect their own constitutions when adopting positions on matters of national importance. “This is the mischief we are trying to run away from. We have tried but we have not fully addressed the problem and fully decentralised power from the funders. Funding affects independence which then affects decision-making and perceptions as well. Until we disabuse this notion we will continue to face challenges in our democracy. It’s a journey we have begun. We will get there with time,” Magara said.

He said party indiscipline was, nonetheless, inexcusable and those who abuse party positions must be dealt with.

However, the need to use party structures to adopt political decisions is critical, says   Peter Aling’o of Institute of Security Studies. He observes that decisions with far-reaching consequences on governance and constitution ought to be endorsed by NDCs.

“Having a NEC endorse such decisions is not enough. NDC must ratify such decisions for it to obtain necessary legitimacy. PGs are mere caucuses. Party members must own such decisions otherwise you are taking a huge political gamble,” Alingo, who has worked with political parties for over a decade, said.