Friday, February 22, 2008

Bomas/Wako Draft was waffle

Its one thing to want to correct anomalies, its another to pick up a sledgehammer and swing it at the anomalies. The constitutional anomalies that plague our nation can and should be resolved by addressing its weak points. The Bomas/Wako draft was long on words covering every nook and cranny but anybody who has seen good
constitutions will tell you that they are based on principles rather dealing with every minutiae. After spending Ksh10bn+ last time, one would have thought that we'd have a more rational approach to constitutional issues. Let’s ask ourselves:

  1. Is the current constitution wholly bad? If it is, then lets look at whether we can write the sections that are deemed most important first.
  2. Is it certain sections that offend? I think this is the more likely scenario with the executive section being the main one. In which case, we can have a focused debate between the so-called activists and Parliament and a committee of eminent legal and public minds and come up with well structure 3-pillar executive.
  3. Is it only one section? In which the debate would even be better focused.
  4. Can we change the constitution through minimum incremental reforms? Most definitely.

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