Tussle over Kenya's new electoral boundaries

The political tussle over the review of electoral boundaries remains the major roadblock in the journey to a new Constitution, some lawmakers have said.

Speaking separately to the Daily Nation on Monday, the MPs said it would be 'useless’ to tie the quest for a new Constitution to the ongoing boundary review exercise.

But other MPs pushed for the Committee of Experts to include in the new Constitution the parameters to be used to set the boundaries.

The chair of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitution Review, Mr Abdikadir Mohammed, said his team will have to “strike a compromise” so as not to derail the process.
While noting that there was need for “fair representation”, Mr Abdikadir, also the Mandera Central MP, said it was futile to tie the law review process to the duties of the Interim Independent Boundary Review Commission.

IIBRC chair Andrew Ligale told the CoE to delink the review from his team's mandate.

Similarly, the Kriegler report, the basis for the formation of the IIBRC, emphasised the need to keep “politics” out of the boundary review process.

Agriculture assistant minister Kareke Mbiuki reckoned that there was no point of getting the new law without “a proper criteria through which new constituencies will be formed.”

Mr Mbiuki, an MP for the populous Nithi constituency, said that unless the criteria is set in the Constitution, then the Committee of Experts’ work will be incomplete.

Criteria
“The new Constitution will not be complete until we agree on these issues. That’s the truth,” he said.
The MP and his Central Kenya counterparts, among them Ephraim Maina (Mathira) and George Thuo (Juja) want the criteria for drawing up new boundaries agreed upon ahead of a referendum on a new constitution.

The harmonized draft constitution formed regions and counties based on the Bomas draft, but these, the MPs argued were based on the existing boundaries, which were themselves flawed.

With the doors closed on the public debate of the draft Constitution, Mr Thuo, also the Government Chief Whip, said “equality of the vote (was) the future of a peaceful, democratic and prosperous Kenya.”