Business Daily (Nairobi)
30 April 2008
editorial
For the last one week, a debate has been shaping in our political arena on who between Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka and Prime Minister Raila Odinga is number two in terms of protocol.
This raises some fundamental question and exposes gaps created by the hurried enactment of the National Accord and Reconciliation Act of 2008. The creation of the Office of the Prime Minister was a balancing act that saw the President lose some functions, while the Head of Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet lost some executive functions too.
As this happened, there was little harmonisation with other Acts of Parliament, which has given the country's political leadership a chance to engage in mischief. These gaps should be tackled quickly for politicians are starting to issue conflicting signals.
While we would have expected the Attorney General, Amos Wako, to clarify issues of protocol, we feel that this is much ado about nothing when the country has more serious issues to handle.
Underlying the clarity is failure by those who drafted the Accord to look into other Acts of parliament and constitutional clauses which would contradict the spirit of the accord.
But rather than engage the public in sideshows, the Prime Minister and the Vice President should work in unison and help the President in healing the nation.
There is a lot that needs to be done. We have the internally displaced who care less who speaks first.
We have the business community which wants assurance that the economy will survive the current dent. But rather than heal the wounds of the December election fiasco, we have politicians fanning fires of hate and digging in for battle. We don't need these. Not now, and not tomorrow.
Like the historical injustices that we are set to tackle, the entire confusion is borne of the fact that we have the President as both the Head of State and The Head of Government. This has created two separate prongs.
Politicians have decided to interpret the National accord and Reconciliation Act of 2008 depending on whether they are aligned to PNU or ODM. We would have been surprised if they didn't.
But looking at the current set up we believe that the problems lie in the separate functions that President Kibaki holds and this is where we need clarity in order to clarify the pecking order.
We believe that the Vice President is the Principal assistant to the President as the Head of State, while the Prime Minister is the principle assistant in implementing the executive functions of the Government.
The confusion on the functions of the office of the president has been there since 1964 when Kenya became a Republic and the office of the Prime minister and that of the Governor-General were merged to create the Office of the President.
This has always led to confusion on when the President is acting as Head of State, Head of Government or leader of a political party.
We believe that in the current line-up we can minimise the confusion. As head of government, the President should start working from Harambee House so that Kenyans can get clarity of the functions of that office.
All State functions, for instance receiving credentials from foreign diplomats, should be at State House and so on.
Our position is that in State functions like Madaraka Day, or Jamhuri Day, Mr Musyoka should be the person to welcome the President since he is the Principle Assistant. But in government functions, like the Rift Valley peace tour, that should be left to the Prime Minister.
Politicians should stop using the protocol issue to achieve political mileage. Instead, they should bring the issues to the floor of the House and debate them, while harmonising the various Acts which go contrary to the spirit of the Reconciliation Act.
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