Talks on emotive Executive begin

The Parliamentary Select Committee team refining the proposed new constitution late on Wednesday evening began discussing the highly contentious Executive issue.

The MPs began by setting the proposed law aside and focusing on cutting a political deal before touching on the clauses in the draft.

PSC chairman Mohammed Abdikadir said the draft constitution had been set aside because a political deal was crucial for the talks to succeed.

Agreement

“We need to have a serious political agreement before we begin discussing the draft clause by clause,” said Mr Abdikadir. The decision is likely to make the PSC members, who had on Sunday vowed not to toe their party lines while in Naivasha, to retreat to their party enclaves and trumpet partisan positions.

During lunch break, the Nation saw ODM MPs William Ruto, Ababu Namwamba, Musalia Mudavadi, Sally Kosgei, Joseph Nkaissery, Isaac Ruto and James Orengo retreat to a room for a meeting. They later walked together to the meeting room chatting and laughing.

PNU lawmakers, on the other hand, went to the meeting room one by one, as did some of the women MPs who walked alone or in pairs back to the meeting venue. While ODM is pushing for the parliamentary system, PNU is seeking a presidential system of government.

The Committee of Experts had proposed a hybrid system, which key members of the PSC have trashed as “a mongrel” and “unworkable”.

Tighten belts

With PSC having vowed to come out with one draft, the MPs will have to tighten their belts in the consensus building process, as the discussion runs into the night. It had been said that most of the PSC members were pushing for the Tanzanian model of power-sharing, but the Nation could not independently confirm the reports.

Indications are that the country may be presented with a hybrid form of government, modelled along that of Tanzania. Support for a parliamentary system is said to have waned.