A lesson in redistricting

In the recent US mid-term elections, the the State of California considered a ballot initiative on the question of the redistricting of electoral boundaries. Proposition 20 proposed to hand over the task of re-drawing electoral boundaries to a state commission. In Kenya, the Andrew Ligale-led Interim Independent Boundaries Review Commission is about to publish proposals for the creation of 80 new constituencies, in line with the Constitution, which makes provision for 290 constituencies. Mr. Ligale, who represented Vihiga between 2002 and 2007, has come in for flak with speculation that his commission proposes the addition of new constituencies to already well-served regions, notably in the erstwhile Rift Valley, Central, Eastern and Coast provinces. Danson Mungatana (NARC-K, Garsen) has gone so far as to accuse Mr. Ligale's team of gerrymandering specific regions for political purposes.

The California experience has shown that when sitting legislators take upon themselves the onerous task of re-drawing voting districts, they do without regard to the needs of the voters but for purely political ends, seeking to entrench the advantages of the incumbent. The effect has been to skew representation in favour of a particular political party at the expense of the voting needs of the voters, denying some minorities rights that are guaranteed by the State and US constitutions. As a result, the California State Legislature has been gridlocked with the power-plays between the Republicans and Democrats stymieing, among other things, the passage of the state budget, sometimes for months on end.

When the Kenyan Members of Parliament retreated to Naivasha to consider the Revised Harmonised Draft, among the questions they wanted to settle was the exact number of Counties and new Constituencies that would be created. Towards this end, the invited Mr. Ligale as an expert to offer insights into the matter. Even then, there were howls of protest from certain MPs, arguing that Mr. Ligale was incompetent to advise them on what the number of new new electoral districts would be in the new Constitution. They ignored his advise and settled on 47 Counties and 80 additional Constituencies and sent him on his way to draft a report on what they had agreed on. Well, the chickens have now come home to roost.

During the Referendum Campaign, there were two schools of thought on the vexed question of delimitation of electoral boundaries and representation. MPs from populous constituencies argued that the one man, one vote principle had lost meaning when the votes of their constituents counted the same as those from less populous areas, virtually all of them from Northern Kenya. The counter-argument was that a new principle should be introduced: one kilometre, one vote, reflecting the challenges of representing constituencies that were sparsely populated but were extremely large in size. The Committee of Experts attempted to find a middle ground and in drafting article 89 provided for variation in the relative sizes of Constituencies to take into account population size and geographical locations of the proposed Constituencies. Their solution pleased no one, hence the objections to what many speculate to be a political agenda by the Ligale-led Commission.

The delimitation of boundaries has consequences, including the allocation of funds under the CDF, the LATF and indeed, from the Government of Kenya with regards to development and other matters. In addition, when the Counties come to life in 2013, a county that as more than its fair share of constituencies shall attract a larger than usual share of the national resources through the CDF and LATF, among other funds. The protests being voiced today reflect the fear that some counties may end up being short-changed while others may suffer from abundance of fortunes. Mr. Ligale must be prepared to defend his Commission's recommendations as persuasively as possible or else he will remain forever a bogey-man for all that ails politics in Kenya.

Let there be no illusion; the politicians making faces at the IIBRC recommendations do not have the people's concerns at heart. They look at the proposed Counties as new troughs from which they can eat all they can. Therefore, when they see constituencies being 'awarded' to other counties, they are concerned that those counties shall have more resources to steal from. They do not consider that the recommendations may have been based on an assessment of the representation question in light of the fact that some constituencies must be split for they are too densely populated to be effectively represented in Parliament. It is an open secret that Central Kenya is too under-represented, but it is also a fact that Central Kenya has been the recipient of far too much national largesse, usually at the expense of other more deserving regions. The situation in Northern Kenya would not have been so dire if resources had not been concentrated elsewhere.

This country is undergoing transformations that were unthinkable barely a decade ago. It is good that Kenyans are now slowly to realise that they have a role to play in governance. It is only a matter of time before the institutions of governance catch up with the rest of the nation. Until then, it is important that we do not allow institutions such as the IIBRC to make far-reaching recommendations without taking them to task as to their methodology or criteria. Only then can we begin the journey toward a truly representative democracy, where even the voices of the voiceless are heard loudly and clearly.