On Monday 19th July we were involved in the 9th forum we are
participating in: this one at Kirinyaga, at a meeting arranged by the
Retired Archbishop Gitari. We talked to around 250 leaders: most of whom were drawn from the mainstream religious groups, (mainly Anglican & Catholic). On Tuesday 20th July we we held our tenth forum, this time in Engineer, Nyandarua. We had a group of over 500 local opinion leaders, women leaders, local leading business people & professionals, elders, youth leaders, etc. David Kabeberi, a leading professional & a local of the area, helped organize this particular forum. This brings our estimate reach as regards local opinion leaders, at close to 3,000, drawn from all over the 5 Counties. (& we still have several other forums to go).
Being part of these forums has been an extremely amazing process,
especially as regards how different the end is from the beginning-on all of them!
Each of the 10 forums so far starts with a certain sense of hostility:
its like the participants have been invited into something they do not want to be part of, but could not say no to the person doing the
invitation. Each forum also starts with getting comments from the
general group, as to views about the proposed constitution: either their own, or what they are hearing. What you will hear during this session are comments that are very clearly based on YES or NO positions:i.e. someone will say 'certain people are lying to us about .........,' or 'we are been told we must pass the constitution even if it has certain areas that are ........,' etc. However, as facilitators we have been insisting on getting a few issues to start of the discussion, & in literally each meeting the list is: Kadhi courts, Abortion, Citizenship, Treaties, Transition, & of course the big one, Land. Of course we will get some amazing interpretations, e,g. that under Children Rights someone says we cannot punish children anymore, or that under county responsibilities we will have to hold official burials for dogs, etc!).
However, the issues are mainly genuine confusion in interpretation, lack of clarity on a clause, etc.
It starts getting interesting once we start explaining the issues. As I
had mentioned earlier, we have found that the best way to discuss this is to first set the context: i.e. that we already have a constitution in place that actually deals with several of the issues in contention, and that the decision at the referendum is a choice between the current constitution, & the proposed constitution. (Incidentally, someone should tell Ruto that no one believes that we can reject the proposed constitution, amend it & pass it by December). An interesting angle to the issue of when we can do this again was explained in one of the meetings: Based on how our politics operate we agreed that it is unlikely that we will be able to hold a 3rd referendum during Kibaki's remaining term, & we also agreed that a new president will be very unlikely to want to amend the current constitution until he is about to leave office; which would most likely be sometime during the second half of his/her final term. So, if we do not fix it now, it will most likely take at least another 7 years before we get to this point, again!
Once we get this out of the way we go through the issues as raised: & start the discussion on each by comparing what we have in the proposed constitution, with what we have currently-& it is amazing to see the realization dawning on each participant indicated by the dead silence in a room of over 300 diverse people, & their focused attention on the points been discussed. Before long people are actually laughing as we compare what the current constitution says on certain issues e.g. when we learn that the current law on abortion can be affected by a simple majority of a quorum: i.e. 16 MPs!: (what we have is in the penal code, which has a lower threshold for amendment). It gets even more hilarious
when we get to land & first discuss how many generations we think will sub-divide our small holdings (through inheritance) before we only have roads & toilets! We then discuss how land is currently managed under the land board-the processes of sub-division, determination of rates and/or taxes, etc, and participants start realizing that minimum acreage limitations are in play today-either by law or natural process: whilst no one is talking about maximum acreage! We do this on all issues raised & by the time we are done with the discussion on the issues, no one has any further questions: & no-one has left!
The best part however is when we start discussing what the proposed constitution has that the current one does not have. People are surprised to learn that the sovereignty of GOK is vested in the President today, as compared to where sovereignty is derived from the people (as in the proposed one): we learn that the proposed constitution clearly states that all land in Kenya belongs to all the people of Kenya collectively as a nation, which means that political leaders cannot dish out our forests, or convert public (government) land to private land secretly & get away with it-something not there in the current constitution: we learn that_the current divisive tribal politics_ could end through the 50% + 1 rule-since no single community can get to 50% on their own, presidential candidates will be forced to strategize on how to UNITE Kenyan communities, rather than on how to divide them!: we
learn that _tribal clashes_ could be a thing of the past because once we remove provinces no-one can be chased from one region because he is perceived to be a visitor there, & directed to go 'back' somewhere else, where his community is perceived to reside-also affected favorably by the clause on investigation of historical injustices on land which could provide an open platform for unspoken grievances to be discussed, rather than where today they stay hidden & get manipulated by politicians to suddenly erupt into violent inter or intra tribal conflict: we learn that _'siasa mbaya maisha mbaya' _policies could end, because resource distribution to a certain extent will be independent of political influence-a constitutional clause states that at least 15% of the national budget must be distributed to the Counties-whether a particular
county supported the president or not! (Frankly, by the time we are
through discussing just these these three areas of change, the
contentions around abortion, kadhi courts, 8 year-old children getting citizenship, etc, have faded into the background as people readjust their expectations and priorities at THIS TIME.)
In each forum we start off by saying that our desire is not to convert NOs to YES, but to explain the issues that are bringing confusion, and do it in the content in which Kenyans live today. However, by the time we are finished-everyone, starting with the religious leaders in each group, are the ones stating how the are now converted from NO to YES!
Some of the statements made that stand out are as follows:
* At Gitari's forum in Kirinyaga, one of the religious leaders
explained that he had attended the meeting very hesitantly,
because he believed Gitari was going to try & convert him from his NO position to YES-& he intended to stay NO. However, after our
forum he felt like scales had fallen from his eyes!
* Still in Kirinyaga, another religious leader said that he felt
like he had gotten saved again-that he had discovered information that had been kept away from him
* Someone else suggested that we had we been the ones attending YES rallies & speaking as candidly as we had spoken-YES would have had 90% of the referendum vote
* Anxiety developed after every forum as people felt cheated of
time, & constrained on how they could reach out to all their
friends & family who had been like them before they attended the meeting, and they wanted us to come back the next day for sessions with their friends, etc.
We use the miracle of the 2 fishes & 5 loaves when asked whether we have the ability to reach out to all the 'lost' (as they call them), in the remaining time before August 4th. We explain that we can do is nowhere near enough, but God has worked with even less in the past, & made it more than enough-the challenge is for each of them to also make their 2 fish & 5 loaves available.
One of the outcomes of the forums so far is that we finally have our
brochures ready: (ahsante to those who contributed). We have prepared two types:
1. A short precise 3-point flier on */'Why We Will Vote YES'/*
2. A slightly more detailed one: with 15-points on* '/Why We Will
Vote YES, & Why We Cannot Vote NO'./*
We have attached copies of both: We have prepared 20,000 pieces of each & we hope to use them during the _Katiba Tours scheduled for the 24th/25th & 30th/31st July Weekends._ For those who might have forgotten what these are, we had suggested that several people can get together early on weekends, and drive around parts of Central in a convoy (5-10 vehicles): distribute Katiba's, answer questions, give out brochures (& buy bananas, arrow roots, potatoes, mangoes, etc, from local markets in
each region). This is to enable those not able to attend the forums due to work commitments, but who really want to be part of the process, to do so on the two remaining weekends. (please write me an email if you want to attend any of these tours).
NEXT- Muranga (Kangema) on 23rd, & Kirinyaga (Kagumo) on 29th. We are also organizing a Youth Forum for next week Tuesday, and a Women's Forum for next week Wednesday-locations to be confirmed.
*/The work goes on...................../*
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Kind Regards,
Ngunjiri Wambugu (0724 958 331)
Executive Director, Change Associates Trust
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P O Box 55589-00200 Nairobi, Kenya
Tel: 2216586/7, Fax 2216587
www.change-associates.org
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