Draft Law: How ‘miracle’ deal was struck

Members of the select team that delivered what is possibly Kenya’s first unifying constitution draft on Friday spoke of the “magic formula” used to reach agreement on the difficult political issues.

In separate interviews with the Saturday Nation during and after the talks, the MPs revealed how lessons learnt from the tragic events that followed the last General Election pushed members to a deal in talks at a resort in Naivasha.

Strike consensus

The MPs sitting in the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) to revise the harmonised draft constitution, revealed how they navigated around party and ethnic considerations to strike consensus on virtually all the contentious clauses, a goal that had eluded the two grand coalition partners for months on end and the government before it.

A group of moderate MPs played a critical role during the 11-day talks at the Great Rift Valley Lodge by stepping in between the sometimes hard-line positions held by a section of ODM and PNU ministers.

The role played by the chair in moderating the debate, especially in the company of known arbiters like Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi, Cabinet minister Dr Sally Kosgei and Mwingi South MP David Musila, also went a long way in softening positions during debate on emotive issues of devolution, the Executive and representation, PSC members who spoke to Saturday Nation said.

Straight-shooting MPs like Chepalungu’s Isaac Ruto and assistant minister Peter Munya, plus nominated MP Amina Abdalla, Garsen’s Danson Mungatana and Gichugu’s Martha Karua, also stood out to ensure that the deal had the aspirations of the people, sources said.

Cabinet ministers Charity Ngilu, Moses Wetang’ula and Mutula Kilonzo said they had all along believed that the PSC would not fail Kenyans this time round. The onus now is with the Committee of Experts chaired by lawyer Nzamba Kitonga to incorporate the PSC decisions into the draft in readiness for debate in Parliament from February 25.

During the handing-over ceremony in Nairobi on Friday, Mr Kitonga indicated that his team would revise the draft which the PSC “had no option but to own fully”. “Once we have revised the draft, you must be able to own and defend it since you have come up with the decisions,” he told the PSC.

He noted that the country did not expect the 26 politicians to agree and hoped that they would be able to get their colleagues in Parliament to support the document. PSC chairman Mohammed Abdikadir said that the “entire political class supports the proposed changes to the draft”. He also noted that the PSC, while in Naivasha, realised that at the end of the retreat they would “either win or lose” by whatever decisions they would make.

On Friday, an overjoyed Mrs Ngilu told the Saturday Nation how the deal “was all about the bigger picture.” “If we failed, the people would take over like they did in early 2008,” she said. “The time had come for us to stop thinking about ourselves and give Kenyans what they’ve been yearning for.

“All these years, the leadership has been too selfish and we were not going to allow that to blind our debate.” Ms Ngilu, a senior member of the ODM party, attended the talks in the company of colleagues Musalia Mudavadi, Najib Balala and William Ruto.

Ms Ngilu revealed how at one point the two coalition partners had to engage in horse-trading in order to achieve consensus. Under the arrangement, ODM acceded to PNU’s demand for a presidential system of governance to win support for its system of devolution to be entrenched in the revised draft. “It was a give-and-take as ODM finally managed to have devolution of power entrenched in the constitution,” she said.

According to PSC vice chair, Mr Ababu Namwamba, the secret was in the lawmakers’ resolve to break “the historical jinx.” “We refused to be divided along ethnic, religion and political party lines, and so we were able to build consensus,” he said moments after the PSC unveiled their deal to Kenyans.

“Everybody is exhausted about going round and round in circles, and we are sure that this is a good deal,” he said in a TV interview from Naivasha on Friday night. He said the PSC did not expect the Committee of Experts to “interfere” with the “very good political settlement” that the MPs had struck during the retreat.