FURORE WITH IIBRC HAS LITTLE TO DO WITH THE PRINCIPLES AND VALUES OF FAIR REPRESENTATION.

The quest for fair political representation has been with us for quite a long time. It was first felt between 1961 and 1963 when Kenya held her first multi party elections. Later, the Kenyatta and Moi regimes aggravated the situation through the creation of more constituencies in total disregard to procedure, often with a view to favouring grandiose political interests. The net result was constituencies that varied greatly in population and size. However, because of the constricted democratic space no one could question such autocratic presidential decrees.

Today, most constituencies have populations that are well above or below the mean population of 133,000. Obviously, this huge variation of population across constituencies negates the ideal democratic principle of one-person-one vote. Joel Barkin`s in his essay titled “Designing Better Electoral Systems for Emerging Democracies” opines that rather than look at equal representation we should be looking at fair representation. This is because fair representation goes beyond geographical size and population. It acknowledges a host of other intervening factors as well. Barkin`s opines that “if the principle of one-person-one vote is respected and constituencies established with equal or nearly equal populations, then the principle of establishing constituencies that reflect communities of interest or "sparsely populated areas" will be violated.”

Cognizant of this challenge and buoyed by the people`s faith in the new constitution, parliament empowered the Ligale led IIBRC to come up with a formula that could best serve the country`s national democratic aspirations while balancing the country`s peculiarities. A hybrid formula was arrived at and parliament in its wisdom unanimously endorsed and adopted it.

However, at the back of our minds we always knew that there was a great deal of easily exploitable ignorance that was likely to scuttle the electoral review process courtesy of the PNU and ODM supremacy battles. And true to this expectation, the process suffered a major body blow on Tuesday when the high court issued writs putting on halt the gazettement of the new electoral units.

At the risk of sounding prejudicial, I must emphasize that this is a political process; it is therefore unlikely that the high court will defuse this brutal, drawn-out political fight mainly between the two political parties. If anything, it will only fuel the fight and make it impossible for a political consensus to be arrived at sooner than later. This delay would be costly given that article 89 clause 4 of the new constitution makes it explicitly clear on when to bring to life new electoral units.

It is also worth noting that the same article 89 clause eleven (11) states that an application for the review of the decision made by the boundaries commission can only be filed within thirty days of the publication of the decision in the Kenya Gazette. …” Currently, IIBRC has not published the new electoral units in the gazette. One therefore wonders the basis upon which the high court application was made.

It can only be that this sudden rush to court has nothing to do with fair representation. Behind this façade are legislators who have one thing in common-they all fear losing their seats to their perennial political rivals. They had all fervently wished that IIBRC would hive off additional constituencies from their existing constituencies in such a way as to placate their rivals to vie in the newly created electoral units.

Besides, it goes without saying that many of them are motivated by the morbid fear of how votes cast in the prospective election shall translate into seats won by political parties and by extension how the same seats shall determine who become(s) the country`s Chief Executive(s). This, in my view, is the very ghost of negative ethnicity that has presided over this country`s steady decline.

TOME FRANCIS,
http://twitter.com/tomefrancis