What to weigh in Constitution change

I see three objectives that should be attained through constitutional amendment that necessitates a referendum.

The first is to create sustainable peace and a predictable political environment. After most presidential elections, Kenyans lose lives, suffer economic downfall and become internal refugees.

Clearly, Kenya is not homogeneous enough to sustain a presidential system of government. I therefore propose a county-based parliamentary system.

Kenyans would vote and the largest party or coalition of parties will form the government, which should be led by a prime minister.

To avoid a winner-takes-it-all scenario, a ceremonial president (Indian system) elected by both Houses of Parliament would lead the Executive, which would also comprise the deputy president, prime minister and deputy prime minister.

The PM should have the leeway to choose a Cabinet from both in and out of Parliament. An MP so selected would be replaced via the party list by the relevant political party.

Members of the Cabinet would be ex officio members of the bicameral Parliament for direct responses to parliamentary issues in both Houses. There would be an equivalent number of assistant ministers.

The second objective is institutionalisation of fairness and equity of votes. In some regions, legislators represent huge numbers of voters, and in others very few.

This is against the democratic practice of “one man, one vote”. To address this, I propose that the county-based proportional representation does away with constituencies.

Constituency-creation largely results in gerrymandering and unfairness. Constituencies are, sometimes, designed with the end result in mind, to favour either a party or an individual.

Resources for development should be allocated to county governments with MPs doing oversight on the national and county governments and legislating.

Party-based politics would also reduce corruption during elections. Votes cast would be directly proportional to MPs allocated to a county.

In South Africa, parties have seats almost proportional to the votes cast for them. But variations can be introduced. For instance, allocation of seats could be capped to, say, 80 percent, to balance party representation.

To enhance predictability and stability, we should limit political parties to three. This can be done after the first election by simply picking the most popular three parties and allowing the smaller ones to join any of them.

While this may seem undemocratic, the contrary creates instability and problems of forming governments. Good examples are Thailand and Italy. Only the three should be funded by taxpayers.

The third objective is reduction of the cost of governance. We should eliminate nominations in Parliament and county assemblies.

All equity desired — gender, youth, disabled or any other affirmative action — would be presented within the party list. We should have no more than 203 members of the National Assembly and 47 senators — or 250 MPs.

The role of the Senate should be enhanced to keep up with best practice and avoid parliamentary dictatorship. It should vet all executive appointments, for instance.

The elimination of the costs of carrying out presidential elections, a substantial amount of money especially when there is a run off, and avoidance of by elections make savings.

The creation of political party lists should be supervised by the IEBC from the county level.

We should maintain the 47 counties as they are. I further propose that we change the revenue sharing formula to 40 percent for the counties and 60 percent for the national government but allocate more functions to the county governments, such as primary education.

To encourage creation of self-generated resources by the counties, we should expand their taxation base.

The elections for county governments should be a duplication of the national ones — that is, the governor will be the county-level leader of the party with the largest majority in the county assembly and the senator the first person on the Senate party list.

To domesticate these amendments efficiently, and in order to have enough time for civic education, the referendum should take place no later than 2020.

Clarity on the objectives of the referendum is necessary as naysayers are already poisoning the electorate, saying it is just for creating positions for individuals.

Seeking sustainable peace, fairness and equity and to reduce the cost of governance are good reasons to warrant amendment of the Constitution.