PNU pushes for 105 more constituencies in new law

President Kibaki’s PNU wants 105 more constituencies created under the new constitution.

They will table the proposal today at the ongoing retreat of the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on the law review that is tasked to strike a deal on contentious issues in the draft.

And Tuesday promises to be a tough day for the 26-member PSC as they tackle the chapter on the Executive, which has created major divisions among politicians and Kenyans.

Tuesday’s agenda will also include the legislature, representation, the judiciary and devolution, which will also spill over to Wednesday.

Moderating

PSC chairman Mohammed Abdikadir is moderating the sessions at the five-day retreat.

In a three-page advisory to the PSC, which the Daily Nation obtained, PNU says its proposal is based on population trends in the last two decades.

It wants a national assembly consisting of 80 per cent members directly elected from constituencies and 20 per cent through mixed member proportional representation to address the disadvantaged and minority groups.

If this proposal was to be adopted, the constituencies in Nairobi, according to PNU, would rise from 8 to 17.

The party has proposed that the demarcation of additional constituencies be based on a criterion that recognises electoral units as rural (normal), sparsely populated and urban areas.

The document seen by the Daily Nation indicates that in addition to Nairobi, there would be 255 rural, 32 sparsely populated and 11 urban constituencies. PNU says that the current 210 constituencies and 3,800 wards should be retained.

Representation, which includes conduct of elections, demarcation of constituencies and distribution of parliamentary seats is top of the agenda this morning.

PNU suggests that the proposed principles be entrenched in the constitution so as to guide the Interim Independent Boundary Review Commission in demarcating new electoral units.

“The PNU coalition recognises that the application of the principle of fair representation has to take into account the retention of existing constituencies as a political reality. Existing electoral units that do not meet the minimum threshold shall be retained, and any delimitation of constituencies has to give a special exemption to these constituencies to ensure that they do not disappear,” PNU says in its proposal.

The proposal indicates that rural constituencies will be determined purely on the basis of the 2009 Population Census and the population of each constituency will be as equal as is practically possible.

Population

For a unit to qualify as a sparsely populated constituency, PNU says, its geographical area has to be at least 9,000 square kilometres. In essence, the party is proposing that other than population information from the census, geographical area should be a determinant.

PNU says that constituencies that qualify as urban are those that are currently in areas designated by law as cities, including Mombasa and Kisumu.

A similar criterion to that in sparsely populated areas will be used, leading to a decrease in the number of constituencies in the urban areas