Let us all fight to be shareholders in a new constitution

Kenyans are keenly watching what is happening on the constitutional review front because this exercise has been a luckless chase for over two decades.

Many times we have come so close to a new constitutional order that would correct our economic imbalances, reinvigorate our power relations, revitalise our institutions of governance, sharpen tools for ensuring checks and balance, and guarantee justice and fairness only to stumble at last hurdle.

It is a road we have been on for close to 20 years – straddled with promises by two presidents and a political class, which remains the greatest impediment to their election campaign pledges.

On the altar of political expediency, selfish and fractured party interests, bigotry and belligerence among our leaders, and our highly enthnicised polity, we have sacrificed the dream of our forefathers. Yet the country is agreed contentious issues aside, we need a new constitutional order to avert further crisis.

Many argue that if we had succeeded in rewriting our tablet of laws in 2005 we would not have had the ghastly events of post-2007 shambolic General Election. The flipside of this argument is unnerving, if we do not do it in the next two or three years Kenya would burn in 2012.

That was the decision reached by the two crucial commissions set up after the wave of killings, displacements, and dispossessions, last year. One was on the bungled elections chaired by South African retired judge Justice Johann Kriegler. Justice Phillip Waki led the other on post-election violence.

But as we saw this week, the landmines on the road to a new constitution are many, lethal and could see the whole exercise flop, again. The common denominator in all the failed attempts to achieve this dream, including the closest to success in the 2005 referendum, remains politicians and their personal interests.

Consensus

On Wednesday the chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional Review Abdikadir Mohamed warned political grandstanding could destroy the process. He was incensed that instead of submitting their views to the Committee of Experts, the parties were whipping up national support for their positions. He reminded members the committee will identify the contentious issues, and then together with the reference group and Parliament, consensus shall be struck.

We are wading through a delicate moment. If we let politicians to mishandle the process, we would, as Kriegler warned, have created a situation where bloodletting in 2007 would look like it were a Christmas party.

To deliver a new constitution, avert a national catastrophe, and to unite the country behind what is good and fair, requires wise political chaperons. It demands political sacrifice and the will to succeed. Above all, it requires that the public must be more vigilant, insistent, and incessant in demanding and guarding what it will ultimately own.

Today the call goes out to Kenyans to unite above tribe, clan, class, and religious interests – in the push for a new constitution that is agreeable to the majority and protective of the minority.

As we do it we must remember Patrick Henry’s counsel: "The Constitution is not an instrument for the Government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the Government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."