THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATE

KOIGI WAMWERE, Member of Parliament and social justice activist provides the other side of the referendum debate..read on

That we had a peaceful referendum was a giant step forward for our democracy. We must entrench referenda into our political culture.
That said, we must acknowledge that as a contest, the referendum had losers and winners, gains and losses that we need to take stock of to know exactly where we stand today and before we close the chapter for something else.
We begin with losers.
The constitution of independence was not ours and never worked for us. Since Oginga Odinga wrote Not Yet Uhuru, Mother Kenya had gradually been conceiving a new constitution. Like Jesus, the new constitution would liberate the nation from the yoke of constitutional dictatorship and the poor from the death of poverty. However the much expected salvation of both the nation and the poor was not to be.
When I started mourning the crucifixion of Jesus of the poor, a Kanu MP asked me, "what are you mourning?"
"Death of Jesus of the Poor," I said. Dismissively he replied, it was the poor who killed their own Jesus. I could not argue. Yes, like the shouting mob at the trial of Jesus, egged on by their leaders, the poor killed their own Jesus.
As the poor crucified their Jesus, they put themselves and their children at the mercy of Barabbas of the current constitution.
Democracy was the third casualty of the referendum. With the rejection of new constitution, we are back to square one, to the indomitable powers of the president under the current constitution. We mourn the wonderful Bill of Rights that gave us 25 more rights than the current constitution that is now no more.
As Prophet Isaiah would say, justice lies prostrate in the public square. With the crushing of the draft constitution, victims of ethnic clashes may never be resettled, truth of who killed our JM Kariuki, Tom Mboya, Bishop Muge or Father Kaiser may never out and victims of torture in Nyayo House may never be consoled.
Those who championed the death of Jesus are the same ones that Jesus had condemned for corruption. Now that he is dead, it will be business as usual, thanks to the voting power of the poor that will suffer most from it.
If so many lost, who won?
As I write foreigners with expansive ranches and enormous tracts of land in Laikipia, Taveta, Nakuru, Kericho and absentee landlords at the coast have slaughtered cows for their workers and squatters to celebrate that they will never own any of their land that the new constitution was to give them after reducing their leasehold from 999 years to 99 years. It was to represent foreign land interests that Charles Njonjo was at the Orange victory rally at Uhuru Park.
Though many voted against the new constitution to spite and remove the president, his fate now is exactly that of the frog we punish by throwing into the water. Burdened with the current constitution, he is again free to exercise those same dictatorial powers that the new constitution was to clip.
As Narc lost, Kanu gained. Though the referendum was to save the nation from the constitution of its tyranny, it came out of the referendum completely cleansed. And what a twist of fate that Kenyans who cast mud at Moi in 2002, are the same who voted against the new constitution, would today gladly have him for their president and celebrate Charles Njonjo - ashamed of being Kikuyu and African - as one of their heroes.
Having served as the ideology of the referendum, negative ethnicity came out as the most popular, potent, emotional and dangerous ideology of this country.
I can understand some people’s bitterness against Kibaki and his government but can’t see what the entire Kikuyu community has done to them to deserve so much hostility as the scapegoat of all their problems when almost half the Kikuyu refused to come out and vote for the new constitution because of their disenchantment with the government.
Those who hope to ride on the back of the tiger of negative ethnicity to State House can rest assured by histories of Germany and Rwanda that when the beast they are co-habiting with finishes with their ethnic enemies, it will consume them too.
But what cause did negative ethnicity serve in the referendum? It was to advance personal political ambitions upon whose altar communal and national interests were so conveniently sacrificed. Even the poor had no qualms surrendering their interests to promote and die for those of their tribal leaders. Indeed, it is the centrality of personal ambitions that metamorphosed a noble struggle for a new constitution into a dirty war-unto-death for political power that will continue to rage well after the referendum.
–Mr Wamwere is the MP for Subukia