Let us go for a federal system to allay fears raised by leaders

The Tangatanga-leaning Mt Kenya MPs who on October 24th publicly issued “irreducible” conditions to the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) are neither smart nor strategic.

Their timing and calculation were way off the mark. For starters, they were faulting a report which had not yet officially come out. When the BBI team was visiting their counties, most of them never showed up to air their views – or concerns. Why now?

Secondly, if their aim was to derail the BBI train at this late hour, the tactic backfired. Indeed, in their hasty short-sightedness, they only provoked leaders from other regions to start marshalling their positions to counter them.

Notice how National Assembly Majority Leader Adan Duale felt emboldened to immediately go on the warpath with a counter-proposal for a parliamentary system, precisely the thing the group was speaking against. He sounded turbo-charged.

FUND ALLOCATIONS

To be sure, their core demand – equity in the distribution of parliamentary constituencies as well as in county fund allocations – is a sentiment shared by the entire mainstream leadership across the Mt Kenya region, not just by the homegrown Tangatanga faction.

The question is whether demonising BBI is a shrewd way of achieving those goals, or whether taking advantage of this BBI process and shaping it for the larger political and economic benefit of the region isn’t the cleverer approach.

A more grown-up Mt Kenya response to the anticipated unveiling of the BBI report came on Tuesday from a group of governors who fall under the ten-county Central Region Economic Bloc.

Led by their chairman, Nyandarua Governor Francis Kimemia, they cautioned that it was premature to start throwing “emotive” barbs at a report that has not yet been made public.

DEVOLUTION

Don’t undermine the BBI initiative before we see the product, so warned the governors in a pointed dig at their parliamentary counterparts opposing the yet-to-be-released report. The governors stressed they will evaluate BBI by how it treats devolution, specifically on the matter of transferring more funds to county governments.

“We shouldn’t run politics by way of threats: ‘If you don’t do this, I won’t do this’. Let’s wait for the report,” advised Laikipia Governor Ndiiritu Muriithi in a separate interview. Earlier, Tharaka Nithi Governor Muthomi Njuki had dispensed with the niceties. He declared he was waiting for President Uhuru Kenyatta’s stance and would go with that. Aha?

The underlying jostling over BBI is symptomatic of the raw divisions that have quickly emerged and which have taken unusual turns.

Here was Duale, an abiding pillar of Deputy President William Ruto’s political wing, berating their Tangatanga chapter in Mt Kenya. Stranger still, Duale was staking his BBI position (ostensibly on behalf of pastoralist minorities) in clear contradiction to the known preference of Ruto’s Rift Valley base, which hopes (?) to inherit the existing structure of government and the undiluted powers of the Presidency intact.

HIGH OFFICE

That is if their man makes it to the high office. If Duale is genuine, then a lot of horse-trading looks like it is coming, and the regions should better get ready to put together their strongest teams to handle the deal-making. Is Lamu ready? Or West Pokot?

All along, the DP’s camp has been dead set against any proposed expansion of the Executive to accommodate the office of prime minister and deputies.

Though lately he has been taking a somewhat different tack, Ruto remains deeply hostile to the BBI, which he believes is a ploy to block him from his all-consuming ambition to become president.

It could very well be, because the powers-that-be don’t seem to trust him holding the levers of powers.

Why that is the case is not for me to say. All that I am sure of is that Uhuru knows Ruto very deeply more than the Tangatanga and Kieleweke formations in their shouting match will ever know. What Uhuru knows about his estranged partner is what we Kenyans need to know. The rest is detail.

Truth is, the equity in constituency representation the Mt Kenya Tangatanga mob was fronting for can be bargained for in either parliamentary or presidential systems. Either system can work.

FEDERAL

Or even a mongrel one. It’s not either/or. But why shouldn’t we think out of the box? Why not go federal? We are already halfway there with a half-baked version of majimbo which we are calling devolution. Let’s remember federalism is a much preferred choice by many countries.

Some are diverse, others not so. Ethiopia is federal, with an option for any region wishing to secede to do so. Nigeria is federal. Germany is federal.

The USA is federal. So is India. The beauty of federalism is that the naked tribalism we see in Kenya can be contained in a constitutional format.

From there we will see how the different regions will fare. Each to its own. Oh yes, and Mike Sonko can continue running Nairobi, to its peril.

Let’s go federal.

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