CDF with checks and balances will benefit suffering citizens

A newly built educational complex at Karapul Primary School. The project is funded by the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF). [Isaiah Gwengi, Standard]

Those who have followed the Constituency Development Fund journey will know that we when at the Constitutional Implementation Commission, supported by several Civil Society Organisations initiated the anti-CDF proceedings that recently culminated in a Supreme Court decision declaring the Act unconstitutional.

My animus against the CDF, as was organised under the impugned Act, is on record. In my days as a card-carrying legal purist, I believed that Members of Parliament were elected to legislate and oversight, not to "bring development". Consequently, I had disdain for any process that gave MPs charge over public money as that compromised their ability to carry out their core functions.