The drafting of a new Kenyan Constitution that shifts considerable powers from the presidency to a yet-to-be-created post of prime minister formally ended on Tuesday after a six-year gestation, but opponents of devolution still have a few cards to play.
Attorney General Amos Wako has 14 days to present the new basic law, drafted by a national conference for almost a year, as a Bill before Parliament, which has up to 30 days to debate it once the house reopens on March 30.
”This is an historic occasion, this is to confirm that I have received the draft as the attorney general, as a member of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission [CKRC] and as a delegate,” Wako said at the ceremony.
If the Bill is enacted, the new Constitution will come into effect once it is signed into law by President Mwai Kibaki. As the law stands, Parliament can only approve or reject the document in its entirety, but not change it.
”Today we come to the end of the most critical phase of the review of the Constitution … through this text the people have spoken,” CKRC chairperson Yash Pal Ghai said at the handing-over ceremony.
The ceremony was boycotted by Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Karaitu Murungi and other Cabinet ministers opposed to the creation of a powerful prime minister.
Ever since the commission was set up in 1998, the process of rewriting the Constitution has been bogged down by countless legal machinations and attempts to thwart the review.
Even key figures in Kibaki’s government have thrown their oar in, most recently by tabling Bills that would allow Parliament to alter the draft before putting it to a referendum.
And on Monday, three of the conference’s 629 delegates seemed to have won an injunction preventing Tuesday’s ceremony going ahead.
But Wako said there was nothing in this eleventh-hour ruling that prevented him taking possession of the document.
”As the attorney general, I am conscious of my duty to promote, protect and defend the rule of law. I want to assure delegates and Kenyans that I have received the draft from CKRC and I will, in accordance with the law, table it in Parliament,” he said.
After Wako’s announcement, delegates danced, cheered and others shed tears of joy. Ghai himself was excited and, surrounded by delegates, said that ”after a treacherous road, the ordinary Kenyans have overcome hurdles and emerged to be heroes”.
”Parliament should respect its own laws, and not let Kenyans down,” he said.
Throughout the process, the fiercest debates, and most of the legal hurdles, have stemmed from the devolution question.
While most of the population want the near-absolute powers of the president watered down, a powerful minority is determined to
preserve them.
”Certain persons goaded by some powerful state officials are bent on scuttling the review process in various ways, including through the courts,” Ghai said on Tuesday.
”The movement for reform was a response to this total collapse of constitutionalism, that is to say the arbitrariness of the exercise of state power, the refusal of the government to respect limits of its power or authority, the disregard of the rights of the people, the absence of checks and balances and consequent lack of separation of powers,” he added.
The devolutionary issue is also the chief cause of a major rift in Kenya’s ruling coalition, which in December 2002 elections routed the long-ruling Kenya African National Union, led by former president Daniel arap Moi.
A key proponent of the rewiew process, Roads Minister Raila Odinga, widely touted to be Kenya’s first prime minister, said Tuesday’s ceremony ”was the greastest day in the history of Kenya”.
Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka described the occassion as ”a stamp of approval on Kenyan sovereignity”. — Sapa-AFP