Secession talk is poisonous to our growing economy

I do hope that the secession talk peddled around by a section of the political class is a transient manifestation of sour grapes as a result of a gruelling political contest. Jeer him or not, I want to applaud opposition leader Raila Odinga for he allowed wisdom to prevail when he called off “his swearing-in” that was scheduled for December 12, 2017.

The careless talk by Opposition minions about secession is in bad taste, and is based on no legal or commonsense grounding. I have read and reread the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and have tried to establish the remotest angle upon which secessionist voices are basing their argument on, and couldn’t find any.

Article 20, which expert and pedestrian commentators cite, does not cite loss in a political contest as one of the grounds that a people may seek self-determination. I have two arguments why secession talk should be nipped in the bud.

First, it is to contextualise David Easton’s definition of politics as the “authoritative allocation of value” and Harold Dwight Lasswel’s “Who gets what, when and how.” Kenya is a democracy, but we are also a nation built of many communities.

Democracy means that if you have a lesser  following, you lose to the one with a bigger following. This is enforced through “control of political capital” in the fashion of “authoritative allocation of value” as defined by Easton. But our constitution has provided for checks and balances through parliament and devolution.

Sustainability

Parliament allocates resources and the Treasury is only a custodian. As such, even the counties that did not vote for the ruling party get their fair share of the national resources through straight forward legal instruments, including the County Allocation of Revenue Act. This is line Laswel’s “Who gets what, when and how.” In the context of our democracy therefore, we cannot bring in the secession debate every time we lose. My second argument is on the question of economic sustainability in a post secession scenario.

Numerous analyses tell us that Nairobi carries 60 per cent of our GDP and this would also be the same proportion for Government revenue. Apart from Nairobi, only a handful other counties have any meaningful economic activity to generate revenue that would sustain the construct of a state to provide social services such as education, heath and administration of justice. It is therefore fair to hypothesize that without Nairobi, 80 per cent of the county governments cannot survive.

Treason

While many international relations experts have argued for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine, few forget that the Palestinian Authority is actually funded by the state of Israel. The few social services available in Palestine are as a result of the benevolence of the state of Israel. I have argued before that devolution has to be given the “J-Curve” opportunity to work. It is a heavy investment and the foundations have only been laid.

This moratorium should not only be afforded to the county governments, but more importantly to the national government as the  custodian of our national unity.

The moment each county has achieved fiscal independence  - by  way of revenue generation and funding their budgets - the attention given to the presidency will  slowly fade away, and the secession talk will be proven to have been extraneous and inconsequential.

While it’s true a section of voters did not realise their aspirations on August 8 and October 26, they have a legal and moral obligation to submit to “the authoritative allocation of value” as espoused by David Easton.

Soon after Donald Trump was elected President in the US, there were street protests, but the law is the law, and most Americans are now at home with the state of affairs.

The State must deal firmly with exponents of secession and division. There is a thin line between them and economic saboteurs. I submit that secession talk should be dealt with the same way a country would deal with external aggression.