Personally, I have been keen not to take sides in political matters, especially now that we are two factions in Jubilee – Kieleweke and Tanga Tanga.
I think it is unfair for us to fight within Jubilee. We should fight for the common man and champion the interests of the majority poor and in the process unite the country.
However, on this issue alone (referendum) I strongly disagree with the Tanga Tanga team that identifies with Deputy President William Ruto. I fearlessly endorse calls for a referendum.
As to whether the party should take a common position, yes, I think so. I think I will propose that Jubilee as a party should appoint a committee of representatives well versed with these issues. They hold their meetings and inform the party, and particularly MPs and Senators, to take a common position when the referendum debate comes to parliament. That is the best scenario. But so far, none has been done.
As to why I am supporting a referendum, there are several reasons. One, the way the Constitution is currently formulated does not sufficiently address the issue of ethnicity.
In terms of the way power has been configured, the system still dictates that the winner takes all. The person who wins does all the appointments, gets all the powers and even the law itself does not ensure that those who win are inclusive enough.
Article 138 (4) of the Constitution is the one that spells out the winning threshold. Should we change it? It says the threshold is 50 per cent plus one.
But for me, that is not a sufficient threshold. It can easily polarize the country.
You can see from the last two elections, that two major communities can reach that threshold.
It excludes other communities and if the situation continues that way forever, we can have what we call a bipolar system. The country will be polarized and divided into almost two equal blocks. That is very dangerous.
We need to reconfigure that article so that if a person wins, then he or she has a broader mandate.
There are several ways in which Kenyans can do this.
We can have a concessional democracy. This basically is a grand coalition, but of course, it has its own demerits.
We once tried a grand coalition government between 2007 and 2013 and we saw the demerits of that kind of system, but it is a better system than the one we have currently.
The Murang’a Senator spoke the Star
