News
Revealed: What new constitution says
Posted Monday, November 9 2009 at 22:00
In Summary
- Team of experts does a balancing job of dispersing power and entrenching rights
In an interesting innovation, the president will be able to send Bills to parliament for enacting into law. But he or she will also be able to choose to send such Bills directly to the people, who can adopt them into law through a referendum and with no input from parliament.
The Head of State will still dissolve parliament but it will just be a formality at the end of the legislative term or if the government falls through a vote of no confidence. Parliament will have its own calendar fixed in law and the president will be stripped of his power to dissolve it at will.
The draft provides for a system of devolution based on 14 regional assemblies and 70 county governments that will be headed by governors. Other than the Nairobi Metropolitan, governed by a popularly elected mayor, the other 13 regions will have between three and nine counties.
The country will have two houses — the Senate and National Assembly — and will also have regional governments which will replace the Provincial Administration.
The new law requires that no gender should occupy two-thirds of the seats in the National Assembly.
Elected members
In the Senate, every county will have a representative while every region will elect two women. One person to represent either the youth or persons with disabilities will be elected from every region. In total, the document proposes a senate of 113 members including a speaker, who will be an ex-officio member.
Other than the elected members representing constituencies, 70 seats will be reserved for women in the national assembly. There will also be seven members representing marginalised groups and a similar number representing persons with disabilities.
If the current number of constituencies is retained, the national assembly, according to the draft will have 295 MPs, including a speaker. The new parliament will therefore have a total of 406 representatives and two speakers.
On devolution, the new draft improves on the Bomas and Kilifi drafts by providing clearer provisions on relations between the central and regional governments, particularly on matters of taxation and jurisdiction of relevant institutions.
The county governments will deal with the socio-economic issues affecting the areas but shall have to be consulted by the regional governments.
The national government will deal more with formulating policy and leave the implementation to the regions and the counties.
The draft wants major changes in the Judiciary, with all judges required to step down when the new constitution comes into force. They will only be reappointed if they are cleared of corruption.
The draft has also retained the Islamic kadhi courts as currently constituted.
The new constitution will also allow for dual citizenship and sets up a commission for resource allocation.
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Submitted by baddiePosted November 12, 2009 05:58 AM
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Submitted by We_need_a_revolution
Regional and National/Federal govts.... thats all no need for the counties...
Posted November 12, 2009 02:27 AM -
Submitted by We_need_a_revolution
Regional and National/Federal govts.... thats all no need for the counties...
Posted November 12, 2009 02:27 AM -
Submitted by meanmaroon
This kinda of looks like a cut and paste job of US and British constitutions, helped along by a shot of whiskey. Maybe CoE, start by giving the public your rationales. One suggestion, the US tax rate is 35% while Kenya’s is 55%. How about letting Kenyans vote their tax rate? Also, in 15 out of 24 years of Moi, and 5 out of 9 Kibaki years, Kenya’s GDP was less than 2 percent. This is the real problem, tenure in the executive office. Cut it short to one term, like Mexico does.
Posted November 11, 2009 09:14 PM -
Submitted by kenyansoul
This is how our team of experts has decided to fix 2007 debacle. First by making the constitution just for ODM and raila. There is no foresight here but since Kenyans like learning from experience, I guess the next generation will have to fix it. The problem was simple; all the constitution needed is to rotate the presidency in all provinces. But the team of experts resulted to kill a mosquito using a bazooka. We will have the largest and expensive government in the whole continent with a lot of bureaucracy.
Posted November 11, 2009 08:24 PM
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Are we still singing the same old song? How about to have a government that is really functional and not-so-power hungry and that cares for the welfare of all Kenyans, create jobs, improve hospitals, schools, colleges, govt offices, quit corruption, cut the cabinet posts, pay ministers and MPs reasonably, exercise taxes to every Kenyan regardless of the office they hold....on and on..how about that song? Real mzalendo can sing to it!!!