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Kenya: Seal Legal Gaps in Coalition
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
EDITORIAL
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Last weekend while visiting Kisumu and his home district of Bondo, the Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, once again said opposition politics have no place in the coalition government, especially from members of his Orange Democratic Movement and by extension those of President Kibaki's PNU.
By so doing, the Prime Minister was raising cardinal questions that should be addressed quickly. The main one is the role of Opposition in this country.
We are living in the dawn of an era and witnessing the shaping of a new nation.
The current coalition is a testing time for this country and it will inform the future of the multi-party democracy which, regrettably though not surprisingly, has turned to be a contest of tribes rather than a contest of ideas and principles.
At the political space provided, the success of the coalition will form a foundation on which future national politics will be played.
There are many questions that have not been answered in our current situation neither by the Constitution nor by our politicians. What would be the role of Opposition in a coalition government?
Who among the members of parliament should join the Opposition? Are back-benchers from a party in government taken as being in government too? Is it time we allowed independents into Parliament?
Traditionally, the Opposition is a government-in-waiting. But in our current situation, we do not have that luxury in place given our post-election violence past.
Ababu Namwamba, the MP for Budalang'i and his Lugari counterpart, Cyrus Jirongo, feel that the country needs a 'grand opposition' to keep the Grand Coalition on its toes.
To an extent, they make sense. This is because for the coalition to work, it requires principled opposition. But who among the MPs can bell the cat?
These are matters that Parliament must address and seal all the legal loopholes that were left during the hurried crafting of the National Reconciliation Act and which continues to have some teething, though surmountable, problems.
The confusion that we witness today, however, had earlier been noticed after the scrapping of Section 2 (a), which saw us adopt a multi-party system.
Interestingly, we then retained a single party structure that still had an all-powerful presidency backed by an equally-powerful Provincial Administration.
We have to learn from that failure and move fast to rectify the clauses that make the Coalition weak in character and substance.
This is because we have adopted a coalition structure and would like it to operate within a multi-party structure. The two systems cannot work in tandem and there is need to overhaul some of the laws and regulations to make the coalition work.
The issue of national unity cannot be taken for granted and Mr Raila was well meaning when he said that it should take precedence of all other things.
By categorically stating that he stands for a unified nation, the Prime Minister has shown that he is a national leader.
But he should move to solidify the Coalition by proposing changes in our statutes that will also create room for checks and balances while giving room for the coalition to succeed
As we have said before, Democracy must be home grown and should suit a national agenda. Multi-party democracy, however sweet, has its downside too in fragile countries that are still ethnically divided and where the competing blocks soon turn to be tribal blocks.
When multi-party democracy descends to those levels, a nation must craft a system that can hold the country together rather than forge on a destructive path.
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What are we saying? That our multi-party democracy needs to be looked at afresh. We can only test the coalition machine if we make all the parts work. That is what national unity is all about.
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