We’ll hold referendum before 2022 elections

Former Prime minister Raila Odinga meets Adams Oloo and Yusuf Haji during a briefing on the Handshake committe progress in Nairobi on 1st August, 2018. [File, Standard]

Nothing has gripped the attention of the country this year like the famous handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga. So much so that we seem to have forgotten the substance of the whole Building Bridges initiative.

The statement by the two leaders has five main segments and eight subsections which all point to bringing unity and creating a stable environment for Kenya to grow economically. I bet many Kenyans have not seen, let alone studied, the contents of the document.

According to the Cambridge English dictionary, building bridges means to improve relationships between people who are very different or do not like one another. Are Kenyans so different, and does it mean we don’t like one another that much? That is up to you to decide.

Going by the acrimony that ensued in the aftermath of the elections last year and during previous polls, it is obvious that Kenya was getting divided and the rift was going to bring down the nation state.

There were two groups of Kenyans; on one hand were those that supported NASA and on the other, those that supported and were ready to die for the Jubilee Party. Therefore, the choice of words in building bridges to unite our people is not really ambiguous.

Collect taxes

In fact, the choice of words in my view does not go far enough since we were really on the brink and a more radical approach is required to build bridges and demolish the walls the political class had created.

On TV recently, Raila Odinga revealed that his followers were planning to collect taxes and had proposed a parallel policing system.

No doubt, secession was gathering momentum. The President might have seen the challenges his administration was likely to face and was right to take the first step to avert a situation where the country would have broken up.

But things seem to be moving too slowly for most Kenyans. In other words, what will anchor the Building Bridges initiative? Is it through a radical surgery of the existing laws, including the Constitution? It could be that the two principals have agreed on a referendum to build those bridges. I don’t know, but there is a high likelihood.

In the second section of the Building Bridges for a new Kenya statement, reference is made to the cycle of violence from 1963 to date. Even under the 2010 Constitution, violence caused by political competition reared its ugly head.

The tone of this section of the statement points to a desired change in how we do things, particularly how elections are conducted to forestall future post-election violence. And what are we to make of the renewed crackdown on corruption? Isn’t the handshake lovely?

Remember NASA’s main grief was that the IEBC was compromised through and through. And you and I know for sure that the apparatus that gave us the ‘vifaranga vya computer’ has not been dismantled.

The lynchpin

That has to be cured before the next electoral cycle. In the third section under the title ‘Where we are heading’, anyone who reads between the lines can see the only direction we are heading is a change of legal framework to avoid acts of violence between civilians.

Section four, which talks about ‘ethnic antagonism and competition’, is the lynchpin of building bridges. Its nine subsections predict the possibility of a referendum in the foreseeable future. The sub-section that discusses devolution clearly shows that the two principals are worried about the number of county governments and they see them as a burden. They say: “Economic viability of the counties is a matter of concern.”

Is Raila Odinga’s three-tier government a possibility now? Once again, the Building Bridges statement argues for clustering counties to gain from economies of scope.  For example, what is the use for Isiolo and Marsabit to both build abattoirs when one of them can set up one and the other can construct a processing plant?

The Building Bridges initiative is a document sprinkled with good intentions. Strictly speaking, it is a political document which, if implemented, will have far-reaching effects on the country. But then, to unlock the potential of the document will demand that it is anchored by new laws.

From the foregoing, my observation is that we shall have a referendum before the next election and probably after the August 2019 population census.

If this initiative can give us a formula that will end the social ills mentioned so many times in the document, then why not attempt to open up the 2010 Constitution?

Mr Guleid is a governance consultant and the chairman, FCDC Secretariat.  [email protected]