Why referendum is a Government project

If, at the peak of post election violence, the newly established illegitimate Government of Mwai Kibaki offered to spend ten billion shillings to bring about peace in this country, the whole nation, indeed the entire world, would have backed him. At that time, in early 2008, all Kenyans thought the money used to welcome international dignitaries who tried to make us stop what was developing into a tribal war in our country, was very well spent. Many leaders, including the respected South African Bishop Desmond Tutu and the former Ghanaian President John Kufour came to Kenya to try and make us stop fighting, without much success.

That last statement is not exactly true because John Agyekum Kufour, a man of very few words, but with an extremely sharp mind and full of wisdom did not quite fail in his mission. After separately talking to Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga he, very much like Solomon, knew what Kenya needed to end the shameful killing and raping that was still going on in this country. Kufour had a Ghanaian diagnosis and a Ghanaian prescription to end all our problems. But it was going to cost quite a bit of money.

To cut a long story short, that is how Kofi Annan, Kufour’s Ghanaian prescription for Kenya, came into the picture for it was the former Ghanaian President’s decision to let the renown international diplomat from his country spearhead peace talks in Kenya that the solution to our problem was found. When Annan looked at the magnitude of our problem he realized the wounds we had inflicted on ourselves were so deep and too complicated to heal. He therefore sought and obtained the assistance of three eminent Africans namely Jakaya Kikwete and Ben Mkapa from Tanzania and Graca Machel from South Africa.

To welcome them we must have spent some money at least in making sure they were safe while in Kenya. To provide security for such people can be an extremely expensive business. All Kenyans who were desperately looking for peace thought the money spent for the security of our VIP guests was very well spent.

It did not take long before Kofi Annan and his team realized that the solution to our problem would be long, tedious and extremely expensive. First he had to sanitize and legitimize Kibaki’s Government by making an expensive suggestion—that of forming large coalition Government led by both the President and the Prime Minister. It was under Kofi Annan’s initiative that the Agreement on the principles of partnership of a coalition Government was signed on February the 28th 2008.

That agreement signed by, Mwai Kibaki, Raila Odinga, Kofi Annan and Jakaya Kikwete clearly says that the crisis triggered by the 2007 disputed presidential elections had brought to the surface deep seated and long standing divisions within Kenyan society. It further said if left unaddressed, these divisions would threaten the very existence of Kenya as a unified country. In the agreement, Raila and Kibaki made an undertaking to step forward together, as political leaders, to overcome the 2007 crisis and to set the country on a new path.
To achieve the goals of that historical agreement, the leaders committed the coalition government they were forming to fulfill some well defined goals they called and numbered as Agendas. Agenda One was concerned with the immediate action to stop violence and restore fundamental rights and liberties. Needless to say that goal was extremely expensive to achieve. There are those who can legitimately claim that though the goal has indeed been achieved the Government is still obligated to spend more money to make sure it is solidly achieved. To do so successfully money must be spent.

According to the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation (KNDR) monitoring project that looks at status of implementation of Agenda One between January and March this year, calm has returned to all areas affected by the violence. According to the report this has helped Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to return to their residences or near their farms. Significant also, says the report, is the increasing confidence among citizens that violence will not reoccur. The report emphasizes that during the period of review there was the absence of political violence which helped people to develop a sense of safety compared to early 2008.

The achievement of Agenda One can be said to be one of the success stories of the Raila-Kibaki coalition Government. But it is a very expensive part of the story for the political survival of the coalition has depended in the maintenance of a very huge Cabinet of 40 ministries. A lot of them are duplicates and they were established simply to create jobs for the party boys and girls from both the PNU and ODM. In a nutshell, the fulfillment of Agenda One has been extremely expensive and is costing the taxpayers a lot of money.

The leaders’ set Agenda Two as a target to address humanitarian crisis, promote national healing and reconciliation is also extremely expensive. According to the KNDR January- March report the Government has spent a total of 1,575,980,000/- in trying to solve the problem of IDPs. The report says by March 2010, the Ministry of Special Programmes had disbursed ksh 10,000 to a total of 157, 598 IDP households to restart their lives. Rift Valley has had the largest share (69.84 per cent) of the funds because it is home to a majority of IDPs. Nyanza province is second at 11.98 percent.

The report says the problems facing IDPs are far from over. Although the Government has provided assistance to many of them, about half of households registered as potential
beneficiaries for reconstruction assistance are yet to receive the funds. The Report concludes that it is important that the government expedites disbursement of funds to these households so that they can reconstruct their homes without further delay. In other words the whole business of achieving the Agenda Two goal is spending money. The entire exercise is therefore an extremely expensive one and the Government has no choice but to spend more of taxpayer’s money to achieve this important goal of the peace agreement.

Agenda Three was concerned in resolving the political crisis or the whole business of power sharing. No one can claim this to have been a cheap process. It has costed the taxpayers an arm and a leg. According to the KNDR January-March report cohesion within the government has remained a major challenge since the formation of the Coalition. It says the Principals have not always managed to rally their parties together for the national good. Rather, it says, political, ethnic and sectarian interests have dominated the reform process and are derailing consensus building on the constitutional review process. According to the report an effective conflict resolution mechanism is yet to be established. May be the best way to achieve this goal is to spend more of taxpayers’ money to create the needed cohesion.

After all the KNDR clearly says power sharing is usually recommended as a mechanism
for promoting stability in deeply fragmented societies because no single party can
govern alone. It says inclusive government, therefore, brings all major parties together to
enable hard decision making and promotion of the national good. A Grand Coalition
usually brings together all groups to protect and promote national unity. The unity that was shown last Saturday by almost all political parties in Kenya when they gathered in Nairobi for the first “YES” campaigns has pointed to the possible achievement of Agenda Three, provided the Government is willing to spend more money to solidify that unity through joint party campaigns to support the Proposed Constitution.

Agenda Four looks at the long standing issues and solutions. Among those issues is the constitutional review. KNDR report notes remarkable developments in the constitutional review process. The PSC, it says, reached an agreement on the harmonized draft constitution and presented the draft to Parliament. The draft, it goes on, is at a critical state where the need for consensus is paramount to avoid divisions that could derail the process when the draft reaches the referendum stage.

According to the KNDR the political will to implement constitutional reform seems to have been achieved and should be maintained as the referendum approaches. However, the report adds, the Coalition Government continues to be plagued with numerous allegations of serious corruption, which raises the alarm on rampant impunity. Agents of impunity, it says, are likely to mobilize against any reform that threatens their interests. The constitutional review is not an exception in this context. This alarm bell by KNDR must be taken very seriously and the Coalition Government must spend money against the forces opposed to the Proposed Constitution, which is part of the whole effort to introduce lasting peace in Kenya.

As Kenyans continue to argue for and against the Proposed Constitution it is now absolutely clear that the whole process is part of Agenda Four which must be seen as part and parcel of the coalition Government’s most important policies that must be implemented if we have to avoid another bloodbath like that of 2007. The Government has been spending so much money to achieve Agendas One, Two and Three. Why shouldn’t it spend money to achieve Agenda Four, for which the stability of this nation depends? Why?