Senate will set dangerous precedent if it endorses Wambora’s impeachment

Embu governor Martin Wambora and his deputy Dorothy Nditi. The Senate would set a dangerous precedent if it endorses the decision to oust the Embu governor. PHOTO/CHARLES WANYORO.

What you need to know:

  • Being in the news often can be an indicator that your area has a lot of problems (that’s how the media works).
  • Most Kenyans had not heard of the governor of Embu before the news emerged that he had been impeached.
  • County assembly members should understand that in a democracy impeachment is an extreme tool used only in exceptional circumstances.
  • The Senate would set a dangerous precedent if it endorses the decision to oust the Embu governor.

One of the remarkable things about Embu is how unremarkable it is.

It is one of the dullest places in Kenya.
Which, in some ways, is a good thing. Places that don’t make the news often are to be envied.

The last time I heard a news item about Singapore, they were planning to build a city underground to cope with space pressure.

Being in the news often can be an indicator that your area has a lot of problems (that’s how the media works).

Most Kenyans had not heard of the governor of Embu before the news emerged that he had been impeached.

I know nothing about the details of the problems that led to the initiation of attempts to oust Martin Wambora.

DANGEROUS PRECEDENT

But members of the Embu county assembly are setting a dangerous precedent.

The experiment with devolution is still very young. It is the single biggest overhaul of the country’s governance architecture since independence.

It is natural that there will be problems and challenges along the way.

But anyone who suggests that the district commissioner model was superior to an elected governor can only have been smoking something illegal.

The DC was answerable only to the President, and the organs he chaired like something called the district development committee drew no input at all from the wananchi.

Instead of engaging in service delivery, the system simply served as the “eyes and ears of the government on the ground,” as President Moi used to call provincial administrators.

Many governors have made mistakes in these first few months.

CREATE JOBS

Rather than buying a palatial five- bedroom beachfront house with a tunnel leading to the Indian Ocean for Sh140 million, Kilifi Governor Amason Kingi could have created hundreds of jobs by starting small-scale projects for the youth in agriculture and offering them guaranteed markets for things on which the county government spends money such as supplies for early childhood education centres.

These mistakes are not reason enough to trash the devolution experiment.

The difference between a governor and a DC is that the governor will face an election every five years.

They can be replaced by the people, which should serve as an incentive to deliver services.

The problem with the route of impeachment is that it means the governor would likely spend more energy and resources staying on the right side of MCAs than on serving the people.

This being Kenya, it would also mean that election losers could conceivably finance county assembly members to topple governors willy-nilly, creating perpetual instability.

The Constitution is not perfect.

Parliament, for example, is ludicrously big, and to meet the gender requirements in future it will be even bigger.

An amendment to reduce the size of some of these institutions and commissions whose chief role is consumption of state resources would enjoy support.

But we should tread carefully on the question of reducing the number of counties.

Let it not be forgotten that the reason Jomo Kenyatta, Jaramogi Odinga and Tom Mboya opposed majimbo in the 1960s was that they saw it as a plot to weaken Kenya.

They feared legitimately, as shown in Nigeria, that big jimbos would eventually agitate for secession.

With Kenya’s exceptionally undisciplined political class, if there were only 10 counties, the intensity for competition for the position of governor would be a major threat to stability.

After the results, some sub-ethnic groups would feel excluded — as we are already witnessing in some counties that have suffered low-grade violence since March 4 — and in the worst-case scenario, it would be necessary to expend a lot of energy managing separatist demands.

The 47 counties are just right for now.

They can be engines for growth and major vehicles to reduce serious problems such as youth unemployment through astute management of resources by leaders who understand local needs. Some counties will do better than others.

But wananchi will have the right to replace the laggards and reward the stars at the ballot box.

County assembly members should understand that in a democracy impeachment is an extreme tool used only in exceptional circumstances.

The Senate would set a dangerous precedent if it endorses the decision to oust the Embu governor.

The writer, an editor with the Sunday Nation, is a Chevening Scholar at the London School of Economics [email protected]