How Nasa, Jubilee manifestos handle thorny devolution issue

Despite some unmet expectations on its outcomes and impacts, devolution has irrevocably changed governance in the country.

Devolution was a major component of the 2010 Constitution of Kenya and some of the legislative reforms that followed its enactment.

Today, the achievements cited by the Jubilee administration include successful (albeit partial) transfer of functions to the county governments, the provision of specialised medical equipment to the counties (a development vigorously contested by county governments), and the rolling out of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (Ifmis).

SERVICE DELIVERY
However, counties now find themselves with equipment they neither use nor need.

Ifmis has been used as tool for control rather than coordination.

As a result many governors see frequent Ifmis ‘breakdowns’ as an attempt to cause service delivery failures and turn voters against them.

Frequent delays in financial disbursement to county governments hamper effective management.

INDUSTRIES

The administration also introduced policy and legislative proposals that slow down and undermine devolution.

Standing out in the Jubilee Party manifesto is its commitment to a ‘one-county-one-product’ programme to promote the development of industries based on products and resource potential unique to the area.

This would mean the development of 47 different product-based industries.

Jubilee also commits itself to strengthening public service delivery at the county level.

ACTION POINTS

For an administration that has been overseeing the transition to devolved government, these commitments would have been a priority within the first two years. Raising these now smacks of failure.

A more detailed description of how the administration would restructure national government departments, semi-autonomous government agencies, regional development authorities, and parastatals would have lent some credence to the manifesto to take the sting out of its anti-devolution tag.

For its part, the National Super Alliance (Nasa) manifesto gives devolution far more prominence with explicit action points.

Key cornerstones include institutionalising cooperative governance between the two levels of government, transfer of all functions still held by the national government, delegation of certain functions to county governments, and sharing revenue with county governments in a manner that is commensurate to the functions carried out by them.

FINANCIAL DISTRIBUTION
Nasa proposes to reform the National Treasury and the Devolution ministry to refocus them on intergovernmental relations rather than act as supervisors of county governments.

Other institutions proposed for alignment include the Kenya Urban Roads Authority, the Kenya National Highways Authority and the Regional Development Authorities.

Nasa also proposes to review Schedule 4 of the Constitution for greater clarity on functional distribution.

This would culminate in the introduction of the Functions and Powers Act to identify exclusive and concurrent functions at both levels.

CORRUPTION

Nasa proposes to assign responsibility over management of infrastructure in primary and secondary schools to counties and involve them in security.

While Jubilee will assign five per cent of proceeds from natural resources to counties and local communities, Nasa wants more allocated to them.

A glaring omission in both manifestos is a commitment to addressing corruption at the county level.

Both manifestos also show little commitment to using devolution to address historical marginalisation.

FUNDS

Jubilee failed to disburse Sh15.4 billion of the Equalisation Fund to the counties (FY14/15 - Sh3.4 billion, FY15/16 Sh6 billion and FY16/17 Sh6 billion).

It would have been useful to see both address the now malignant human resources for health and labour disputes that threaten service delivery, and risk creating a clamour for re-centralisation of health service provision.

Mr Mogeni is an independent public policy professional. [email protected]