Dormant citizens ruin Kenyan dream

NAIROBI: There is a fourth arm of government, inadvertently created on August 27, 2010. It is called the Kenyan People. It is the most powerful branch of government; yet, unfortunately, currently quite dormant.

Its ineptitude has led to the quandary we find ourselves in; a rogue Parliament, a seemingly peripheral Senate, a perceived rift between security and the rule of law.

The 2010 Constitution did not envision a public that participates in governance once every five years. The public is empowered with rights (powers, by another word), benefits and privileges; just like any other branch of government. And just like the other branches, the people also have duties.

Reading the preamble of the Constitution, you would imagine that carrying out these duties comes naturally to the people.

The people described there are a people proud of their diversity and committed to the well being of the nation. However, statistics paint a different picture.

According to the Ministry of Education, 38 per cent of these people - who are supposed to participate in law-making and governance - can barely read.

The top three contenders in the first election under the supreme law received most of their votes from their tribal backyards. According to a 2012 EACC report, when requested for a bribe, 68 per cent of Kenyans will pay.

And this is the staggering figure: 60 per cent of Kenyans have observed a public officer receiving a bribe and only 6.6 per cent of those reported the crime. In a country where the perception of insecurity is rising, the number of cases reported to the police stations is dropping.

These three vices, corruption, ignorance and negative ethnicity, are the drivers of poor governance and insecurity in Kenya today. Yet as those statistics show, they are rampant. It is no wonder that Tony Blair appears to have become disillusioned with democracy.

"Yes, democracy is important, but democracy is not on its own sufficient," the former British PM says in an April 2015 Newsweek interview, "You also need efficacy. You need effective government taking effective decisions. I don't think you have to be authoritarian. But you have to be direct."

The search for efficacy in the war on insecurity is perhaps what drove the President, in a not-very-well-thought-out move, to order the Inspector General of Police to disregard a court order and hire some 10,000 recruits to the Kenya Police Service.

Interestingly, the case was instituted against the police by a fellow government agency – the fact that the Executive has several parts independent of each other has not helped efficacy. It has made the Judiciary step into the realms of policy.

Thus this is where the lacuna lies. Our Constitution has greatly reduced the power of Government institutions in favour of the populace; a good thing. But we are not sufficiently engaged, on both knowledge and duty, with issues in our country so as to fill the vacuum left by the reduced power of these institutions.

The result is a lesser form of anarchy with the courts ensuring that the Executive remains restrained but unable to force the citizens to effectively take up their constitutional role.

Thus, if the President fails to appoint a judge vetted by the JSC, we can ran to court to compel compliance.

If citizens fail to report a crime, can we drag them all to court? When the people are steeped in corruption and negative ethnicity, can the AG seek orders to force this arm of Government to live up to the Preamble?

That we cannot do these things does not mean that we allow the Executive and Parliament to walk all over Wanjiku. We have been there; in some ways it is worse than insecurity. As we uphold the rule of law, we must create efficacy in government.

To do that, the fourth arm of government must become a useful player in governance.

Our Constitution is great, but it is only as great as we the people are. It's how we designed it to be.