How MPs Bomas boycott put slow puncture on Kenya's sovereignty

A section of MPs during the ParliamentSession after the long recess . February 11th,2025.[Elvis Ogina/Standard]

In the annals of Kenya’s constitutional history, one statistic should shame every MP into permanent silence. At the National Constitutional Conference, Bomas I and II, the forum where the people’s will was to be forged into a new Constitution, MPs recorded the worst attendance of all nine delegate categories. Dead last.

Only 13 per cent attended Bomas I, for 28 working days between 28 April and 6 June 2003, and 14 per cent in Bomas II held for 21 working days from 18 August 2003 to 26 September 2004.

Roughly one-third of the 222 MPs showed up for less than 75 per cent of the sittings. A brazen 2–3 per cent recorded zero attendance; they simply never showed up for the historic task of writing the supreme law of the land.

Contrast that contempt with the District Representatives, active citizens chosen from the grassroots. They achieved 86.5 per cent full attendance and near-perfect overall participation. Professionals, women’s organisations, NGOs, religious bodies, and trade unions outshone the elected representatives. This was calculated arrogance.

While the people’s delegates sat through weeks of debate, sacrificing time and comfort to assert popular sovereignty, most MPs treated Bomas as an optional social event.

They couldn’t be bothered to show up for the Constitution that would define their powers, their salaries, and their relevance. Yet the moment the process moved to the Parliamentary Select Committee, their private hunting ground, the absentees became hyperactive saboteurs.

There, shielded from public scrutiny, they did what they do best: protect their privileges. Feeling disconcerted by being outnumbered in the open 565 Constituency Constitutional Forums set to run for an initial period commencing November 2001 up to September 2002, and whose proceedings were recorded verbatim, they retreated to the PSC fortress and rewrote the script.

The hybrid system Kenyans had demanded, a ceremonial President and an executive Prime Minister to tame the imperial presidency, was unceremoniously dumped.

In its place, the PSC’s 2010 draft to the Committee of Experts installed a pure presidential system that preserved the very centralised power the 2002 constituency public hearings had condemned as the root of every national evil.

The Executive arm was their willing accomplice. Presidents and their lieutenants have never forgiven the idea of genuine devolution. Every law, every amendment, every cooperation agreement that seeks to push power and resources to the counties is met with obstruction, dilution, or outright sabotage.

Recent attempts to recentralise functions through backdoor deals expose the same old contempt: power belongs in Nairobi, preferably in State House, and the people’s sovereignty is a nuisance to be managed, not honoured. This is kleptocratic and kakistocratic self-preservation dressed in suits and ceremony.

The attendance scandal at Bomas is the smoking gun. MPs who couldn’t spare the days to listen to the sovereign will suddenly find endless energy to fight against devolution, against independent institutions, against anything that dilutes the Executive’s stranglehold.

They skipped the people’s conference but dominated the politicians’ carve-up. They sneered at grassroots sovereignty while clutching the levers of centralised patronage.

Twenty-four years later, the consequences scream from every headline: counties starved of funds while MPs inflate their own emoluments; youth shot for protesting taxes that service elite debt; land grabs continuing under the watch of the same imperial presidency the 2002 hearings sought to bury; devolution reduced to a begging ritual rather than a constitutional right.

The selfishness is breathtaking. MPs and the Executive treat decentralisation not as a democratic imperative but as a threat to their plates of ugali.

They preach hustler and broad-based government rhetoric while ensuring the system remains rigged for the few. They invoke the Constitution when it shields them, then undermine it the moment it empowers the people.

Kenya’s greatest constitutional tragedy is not that the people spoke in 2002; they did, clearly and unanimously. The tragedy is that their elected representatives listened, then chose to absent themselves from the hard work and reappear only to steal the outcome.

The Bomas attendance list is not ancient history. It is a permanent indictment. Every time an MP or President rails against excessive devolution, remember: these are the same people who couldn’t be bothered to attend the conference that was supposed to deliver it, and if they claim they were not there, they have not done anything to remedy the situation.