EXPERT COMMENT: Aukot party will face big hurdle in assemblies

First, we know that Punguza Mizigo is an initiative of Thirdway Alliance which is in itself a political party.

While it is a bona fide political party, it does not command a huge national following. 

They have made this initiate of theirs which is successful and now it is going to the next stage which is approval by county assemblies. The next stage will amount to public participation through the elected representatives of the people.

We know that the threshold is that it must pass in at least 24 county assemblies.

But we know that the major hurdle for the Thirdway Alliance as a political party is whether the party will be able to persuade the other political parties which sponsored MCAs into the county assemblies to support this bill.

This is because MCAs are not independent of political parties and so the political party leadership at the county assemblies through the leaders of majority and minority as well as political party leaders must be engaged. 

Given that the big political parties and bigwigs are not feeling apart of the movers and shakers of this referendum, it would be a tall order for Ekuro Aukot and his Thirdway Alliance.

Just by way of the possibility of a referendum, if at all it comes to happen, then Aukot would have stolen the thunder for reform and constitutionalism from Raila Odinga, Uhuru Kenyatta and the rest.

He will get all the future historical credit. That would mean that the big players will have to fight for small spaces within the reform agenda which means that it is Aukot who will be determining the political agenda for the next three or so years.

Uhuru, Raila and even Musalia Mudavadi cannot permit that. To the extent that they cannot jump onto Aukot's bandwagon, it spells doom for the initiative.

The big political players have to gang up to scuttle this for their own political relevance and also just to prove a point that new entrants in the political scene cannot come in to determine the political direction of a country.

They cannot play second fiddle to a political party that does not even have an MCA, let alone an MP.

The governance analyst spoke to the Star

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