• The Punguza Mzigo initiative will die if the majority of the county assemblies reject the Bill.
• Should more than half of the assemblies adopt the Bill, a referendum will be inevitable.
Image: JOHN CHESOLI
The Punguza Mizigo campaign can be a giant leap towards amending the Constitution but major hurdles remain in the way of Thirdway Alliance’s push.
Just a day after IEBC cleared the initiative as having passed the first test, it has emerged that the clamour for the change of the supreme law may be suffocated due to lack of a law guiding the referendum.
There are also concerns that some governors and anti-referendum forces may induce members of county assemblies to reject the bill, a single decision that would kill the law change dream.
Fears have also popped up that the IEBC, as currently constituted, has no legal capacity to conduct a referendum after four commissioners resigned.
Yesterday, former presidential candidate and Thirdway Alliance party leader Ekuro Aukot opened up for the first time about his fears, admitting that the next steps will not be a walk in the park.
"I am an optimistic man. If we just remove politics out of this and focus on issues I am certain that this bill will sail through," Aukot told the Star in an interview.
He described the county assemblies as the citadel of integrity test in his push to amend the Constitution.
"I don't rule out the role of corruption where governors opposed to our proposals would want to bribe MCAs to reject the Bill."
Aukot, who said he was happy with the achievements made so far, has no doubt that the Bill will sail through in at least half of the counties and trigger a referendum even if Parliament rejects it.
"The greatest threat is our Parliament, which is largely affected by myopia. If we had leaders of integrity, they would just approve the Bill and have the President sign it into law so that we can start saving money for this country," he said.
Constitutional lawyer Bob Mkangi says the re-organisation of the electoral agency and its guiding legal framework need to be addressed.
He said the Bill faces both political and legal hurdles.
IEBC, Mkangi told the Star, suffers from a deficiency of public confidence and trust. "To repair IEBC, we should not just top up the commissioners but do an overhaul of the commission."
Aukot's law change push passed one critical stage - the verification of at least one million signatures of registered voters, a requirement that thwarted a similar crusade by the Opposition three years ago.
IEBC GREENLIGHT
Punguza Mizigo, according to the IEBC, has been supported by 1,222,541 registered voters, thereby meeting the requisite threshold as required by Article 257 (4) of the Constitution of Kenya.
IEBC will submit the draft Bill to each of the 47 county assemblies for consideration within three months from the date of submission.
However, various arguments have been made as to why the campaign has a long way to go.
Among the proposals by Thirdway Alliance party, counties will become constituencies and each will elect two MPs, a woman and a man.
The party says the goal is to reduce the cost of running Parliament from current Sh36.8 billion to Sh5 billion annually. This will save the taxpayer Sh31 billion annually.
The Bill further says the Auditor General’s reports will automatically be adopted, and lead to prosecutions with all trials ending within 30 days.
The proposals also seek to abolish the deputy governor position, reduce the number of commissioners and hand life sentences for officials convicted of graft. The campaign further says that having an ID card means you are registered to vote.
The minimum funding to counties would be raised from at least 15 per cent of national revenue to at least 35 per cent. The party is also proposing a seven-year term for the President, down from the current two five-year terms.
The campaign opponents argue that some counties have low populations and should not have the same representation in Parliament.
They do not see why a county like Lamu with a population of about 200,000 should have the same representation as Kakamega with 1.6 million people.
This has been a cause of worry if the country adopts a parliamentary system of government.
Another argument is that in dealing with corruption, the Auditor General will be given too much power at the expense of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Concluding corruption cases within 30 days is also viewed as unrealistic.
The opponents of the Bill further argue that you cannot significantly increase funding to devolved units and not give them additional dockets.
They ask: Why take more money away from the national government and still leave it with security, Judiciary, major roads, education among others yet it is clear that these dockets need proper funding?
A similar initiative – the Okoa Kenya – collapsed in early 2016 after the IEBC declared that it had not met the threshold of a million signatures.
The commission said the scrutiny of data presented by Coalition for Reforms and Democracy showed that only 891,598 registered voters supported the initiative from the signatures presented.
The campaign had proposed the decentralisation of security and wanted the Administration Police put under governors.
Cord had also proposed the establishment of the Ward Development Fund for MCAs.
The amendments would have further given senators powers to appoint the Controller of Budget, currently the mandate of the National Assembly. Senators would also to nominate the auditor-general.
Like Okoa Kenya, the Punguza Mizigo campaign wants budgetary allocations to the counties increased.
President Uhuru Kenyatta was at the time strongly against the vote, arguing the country did not have the money for the exercise and that it would polarise the country.
The electoral body had indicated that the exercise would cost about Sh8 billion.