Introduction
This Press statement is issued by Ufungamano Multi-Sectoral Forum Consisting f representatives from Religious Groups, Civil Society, Professionals and Business sectors, Trade Unions and Parliament. In the spirit of consensus building and guided by section 32 of the Constitution of Kenya review act, 2008, Ufungamano held several multi-sectoral, consultative public for a attended by representatives of the above groups. Based on the consultations, contributions and deliberations at those for a, Ufungamano made a submission to the Committee of Experts (CoE) on 16th December, 2009. We have followed with much interest the deliberations of the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on constitutional Review at Naivasha and would like to state the following:
CHAPTER 8: REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE
We do not agree with the proposal by the PSC to increase the number of constituencies to 290, 12 nominated seats and 54 seats for women, making a total of 356 for the Lower House. This does not include the 54 additional seats proposed for the senate.
Our reasons for opposing this are as follows:
· This is a very costly proposal by the PSC and which the country cannot afford.
· The reaction of the people to this proposal is that the current constituencies do not deliver effective services and adding to the number of MPs will not help. On the contrary, it will make matters worse because the expenditure on the additional MPs will mean that there will be less money for development.
· With the 210 constituencies, the Kenya population is already overrepresented compared to a country like the USA with 500 congress seats representing over 30 million people, and India with about 550 MPs for a population of about 1.2 billion people.
Clearly, there is no justification whatsoever to increase the constituencies beyond the current number of 210 in a country languishing in poverty.
We appreciate the concern regarding the imbalance in representation that exists between constituencies. The solution should be:
· The Boundaries Commission should redraw the boundaries but without increasing the number of constituencies beyond 210. This will require creating clusters of sparsely populated’ rural and urban and applying the 20% population maximum deviation formula within each cluster.
· In addition, Constituency Development funds (CDF) and other Constituency based funds should be shared based on Population.
· The concern regarding gender and the marginalized groups should be addressed through the creation of party lists seats but limited to a maximum number of 40 seats and shared between the women and the disabled.
· We do not support the proposal to create seats for nominated MPs.
CHAPTER 12: DEVOLVED GOVERNMENT
We do not agree with the proposal to bring Regional Governments back into the constitution. The first Harmonized Draft Constitution had provided for them but was excluded from the second Revised Harmonized following the heavy rejection by the people.
The view of Kenyans is that Regional governments will be costly bureaucracies with the inherent risk of defragmenting the country ethnically. The experiments of regional governments by Rwanda, Uganda and South Africa have been unsuccessful.
We restate that the overwhelming view of the people is that there should be only two levels of the government: National and country.
CONCLUSION
We trust that the PSC will take into account in the interests of the country.
Thank you and God Bless Kenya.
Signed on 27th January 2010
Mr. Rashmin Chitnis Rev. Dr Willy Mutiso
Co-Chair Member, Steering Committee.
Previous
| Now |
Next
| 
