Nairobi — It would be sad to see any attempts to sabotage constitution reform by individual clergy who may hide under the cloak of the churches to push partisan designs.

Only a few days have passed since the Committee of Experts on constitution review came together with the Reference Group to assure the nation that the sticky issue of kadhi courts was being amicably resolved in the spirit of dialogue and compromise.

The statement was put out to allay fears that the issue might come to derail the review process.

The Reference Group includes representatives of all religious groupings, in addition to other players such a trade unions, professional associations, commerce and industry representatives, women and youth groups, the disabled and others.

Within the Reference Group that serves as a sounding board for the Committee of Experts to engage with various interest groups, all major religious persuasions, including the Muslims and the Hindu are represented.

Christians have representatives from mainstream Catholic and Protestant faiths as well as evangelical and traditionalist groupings. Those are the groups that jointly last week assured Kenyans that they were working harmoniously and there was no cause for alarm.

Hardly had the ink dried on the reassuring statement, however, than a group of clergymen rose up with new demands. Now they are even demanding that the courts' jurisdiction under the current laws, touching only on matters of personal law for adherents, be removed.

This new demand is sinister, especially because it follows that rejecting a new constitution means automatically retaining kadhi courts as presently constituted.

It is important that the Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and other churches represented clarify whether the clergymen spoke in their individual capacities or as designated spokesmen for their respective denominations.