Katiba Mpya Kenya...The Dawn of a New Era

[Ab-Titchaz]

Ikiwa imesalia siku kama nne hivi kupiga kura, vigogo wa Kenya wameamua kujitolea mhanga ilimradi upande wao ushinde hii kura ya katiba mpya. Kwa mujibu wa kura za maoni na 'redio mbao' inaonekana upande wa 'Yes' upo mbele kuchukua hii kitu. Hata hivyo tusubiri hadi hapo tarehe tano ndipo tujue
ukweli uko wapi maana siasa ya Kenya haitabiriki.

May the best man win!

Kibaki, Raila pitch for new law in final rally​

President Kibaki addresses the masses during the 'Yes' campaign rally at Nairobi's Uhuru Park on Sunday​

By EMEKA-MAYAKA GEKARA and PETER LEFTIE
Posted Sunday, August 1 2010 at 16:41​

President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga used the final rally in Nairobi to make a strong pitch for support of the proposed law, saying it would mark the birth of the second republic.​

The two who led a confident Green team to the rally at Nairobi's Uhuru Park exuded confidence that Kenyans will pass the suggested law on Wednesday (August 4).​

"The enthusiasm Kenyans have shown across the country has convinced us they will pass the proposed constitution. On August 5, Kenyans will celebrate a new constitution," said President Kibaki.​

"Nobody will block our efforts to deliver the new constitution," he told the rally attended by Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, more than 20 Cabinet ministers and dozens of MPs. ​

A seemingly re-energised Mr Odinga who returned the referendum campaign on Friday, said a new constitution will mark the end of a long journey in the pursuit of a new order.​

Mr Odinga said the battle for a new constitution has been painful.​

"During the journey, some people were killed, maimed and others orphaned. Lets us complete the journey, raise Kenya's flag on the mountain and ensure a rebirth of the second republic."​

Mr Odinga said the new constitution would open up more opportunities for women, youth, farmers, pastoralists and other marginalised groups.​

Speakers at the rally pointed out that the new constitution would end impunity, tame a power presidency, ensure equitable distribution of resources and address past injustices.​

The Premier deployed football imagery to underline his confidence that the Green team will score the critical goal in the goal, and deliver victory at the referendum.​

"President Kibaki is like Iniesta and would be Fabregas. I will deliver the critical pass to him and I am sure he will score." ​

The Arsenal fan was making reference to Spanish players who helped their nation win the World Cup last month. ​

He paid glowing tribute to President Kibaki and the ‘Yes' team for spearheading the campaign for the adoption of the proposed constitution when he was indisposed.​

"Mimi nilikuwa nalala nikiwa mgonjwa nikiona hawa wenzangu wakiendesha campaign na hiyo ikafanya mimi kupona haraka zaidi (I was lying in bed sick while watching my colleagues run the campaign and this helped me heal much faster)," the PM noted.​

He urged Kenyans to turn out in large numbers to pass the document on Wednesday so that the country could have a new beginning.​

Local Government minister Musalia Mudavadi on his part quoted Tanzania's founding father, the late Julius Nyerere who likened a constitution to a child's clothes which needed constant change as it grows.​

Hamisi MP George Khaniri on his part expressed confidence that the ‘Yes' team will score a resounding victory come Wednesday and appealed to President Kibaki to declare Thursday a public holiday so that they could celebrate the birth of the new constitution.​

Many of the speakers chose not to dwell on the content of the proposed constitution and instead focused on what they said was the impending victory of the ‘Yes' team come Wednesday.​

Cabinet ministers from Rift Valley such as Henry Kosgey, Sally Kosgei and Franklin Bett asked the Kalenjin community to join other Kenyans in passing the new constitution. ​

"We should be on the right side of history," said Mr Kosgey​

http://www.nation.co.ke/Referendum/Kibak....ww/-/index.html​

 

[Smatta]

Mkuu AB, who is this mean looking guy with a gangsterish type of name in the Kenyan's political scene?

Thats mr moneybags Bodyguard bro,.. And I'll Peacefully Vote YES

 

[Geza Ulole]

Why East Africa and the world should care how Kenya votes on August 4


Posted Monday, August 2 2010 at 19:57

To other East Africans and, indeed the rest of the world that do business with Kenya, the draft constitution, if passed in the referendum this Wednesday, will not radically change the way things are done in the country.
However, while the words "radical reform" have been used in heated debate ahead of the referendum, the new constitution will certainly rearrange its politics in ways that only the Ethiopian constitution of 1994 did in the wider East African region.
Kenya's food basket, the Rift Valley Province, has always been key to Kenya's politics - from colonial times to post-Independence - but usually for the wrong reasons. The same is true as the country goes to a referendum on a new constitution.
Rift Valley is not just Kenya's food basket, it is also the region where most of the flowers for the country's lucrative export industry are grown.

And it boasts extensive tea plantations, spectacular tourism sites and resorts and a few remnant but rich white settler-owned farms and plantations.

What happens in the Rift Valley, therefore, has a noticeable impact on European consumers' Valentine's Day flowers and breakfast tea.
The most forceful voices against the proposed constitution are coming from that Rift Valley. They include former president Daniel arap Moi, and Higher Education Minister William Ruto.

Also, while opinion polls show that supporters of the draft constitution form the majority in all of Kenya's eight provinces, the highest level of opposition to it is in the Rift Valley. If there is one province where the referendum vote could be lost, it is the Rift Valley.
The "No" or Red side, as they are officially known, are framing their objections around all manner of issues - land rights; the claim that the draft legalises abortion through the backdoor; and the fact that it has retained the kadhis' courts.

But their real beef appears to be that the structure of a devolved government that the draft constitution proposes radically takes away the political and economic grip these politicians have had in the province, Kenya's largest.

There was never a culturally cohesive Rift Valley Province geographically before the British colonialists came along.
Many communities that are to be found there today lived or criss-crossed through the place in years past, the most prominent being the pastoral Maasai.

They controlled the fertile plains of the vast region, dominating the agricultural tribes who were less "warlike."
When the British arrived at the turn of the 20th century, it is this land they most coveted for settlement, which is why they called it the White Highlands.

To this end, they cajoled the Maasai into signing two very one-sided "agreements" - one in 1904 and another in 1911 - that gave away the central Rift Valley plains around Naivasha and Nakuru and also the Laikipia plateau farther north.
Colonisation had caught the Maasai at a particularly vulnerable moment. Rinderpest had devastated their cattle herds, and a succession struggle between two sons of their laibon (spiritual leader) had degenerated into a civil war.
After that, the colonial authorities built the region as an area populated by different groups whom they collectively called the "Kalenjin," mostly after the Second World War. Indeed, the word "Kalenjin," according to one popular account, derives from a radio broadcaster who often used it (it means, "I tell you.")
Kenya, Rhodesia, South Africa and Algeria were the only African countries where white colonial settlers put down deep roots and sought to run the show in perpetuity.
It is no accident that these were exactly the hotspots where bloody insurrections arose at different moments against the settler overlords.

In Kenya, it was the Mau Mau insurrection - based largely in Central Kenya though - that put paid to settler ambitions and forced the British government to accelerate self-government for the Africans.
When Independence came in 1963, the White Highlands were opened to African settlement through either a willing-buyer wiling-seller arrangement between individuals, or through government-backed settlement schemes initiated by then president Jomo Kenyatta on behalf of landless Africans.

Most of those who benefited - with a considerable leg-up from Kenyatta - were the Kikuyu from the central highlands, where they, too, had lost prime chunks of land to the settlers - who in turn had exploited the fact that the Kikuyu had lost their land to draft them as cheap labour in the White Highlands.
That said, other communities like the Kalenjin, Luhya and Kisii also benefited from the government-backed large-scale land transfers in the Rift Valley that followed Independence.
The Masaai, whom neither the colonial authorities nor their post-colonial successors cared to empower to take advantage of the changing situation, found themselves left out of this land scramble.
It is true that the politically connected and better economically endowed Kikuyu gobbled up very many of the settler farms that were on offer during the Kenyatta years.
They also put together "land-buying companies" through which they controversially bought out many a Kalenjin land speculator at knockdown prices.
The issue has been burning ever since Independence, not so much because of the land issue per se, but because Moi and fellow Kalenjin politicians kept alive the grievance as a perfect tool to mobilise their people politically and thus create a powerbase in the province.
The tactic worked under Kenyatta who, to quell the clamour for land among the Kalenjin, handed Moi the vice-presidency with an assurance that he would succeed him.
Upon becoming president in 1978, Moi not only severely curtailed land transactions in the Rift Valley, but also intensified the effort to extend Kalenjin political domination in the multi-ethnic province.
This is the background that informs Moi and his allies' current opposition to the draft constitution.
The old one served them fine because Moi had gerrymandered constituencies and districts to beef up the numbers of Kalenjin MPs and administrative units in a way their true numbers did not justify.
Though the new draft constitution does not erase the gerrymandered constituencies and districts - to do so would have raised the hackles too early - it nonetheless enshrines two things that will permanently break the monopoly of power Moi and his fellow ethnic entrepreneurs have always used to exercise influence in the Rift Valley.
The first and most dramatic is the breaking up of provinces as political units by creating semi-autonomous counties.
The outcome of this is that the multi-ethnic Rift Valley, more than any other, will metamorphose into multiple counties that will no longer be beholden to a regional power centre in Eldoret, Moi's base, but to Nairobi.
With that, the bigger Kalenjin project and the national power that structure enabled it to amass (it was where elections were won or lost in Kenya) will begin to come apart.
The second change is one that very few people, whether they support or oppose the constitution, fully appreciate yet.
The draft decrees that in future there must be a proportionate balance between size and population, whenever new parliamentary constituencies are created.
Since the myriad constituencies Moi created in the Rift Valley when he was in power had no methodical underpinning other than to reward districts loyal to him, the net effect of the proposed strictures on representation are going to affect these areas most.
The focus on Rift Valley matters is precisely because this is where opposition against the proposed constitution is concentrated.
President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga share the goal of rearranging the Rift Valley's hold on national politics, but for different reasons.
Kibaki appears determined to break the cycle of political violence that targets Kikuyu migrants in the province whenever there are elections, as happened in 1992 and 1997. Also, the constitution will be Kibaki's legacy, thus wiping out the stain on his political record from his controversial December 2007 election.
Though Odinga's own Luo community get subjected to the same periodic violence, his urgency right now is to decisively clip the wings of a political rabble-rouser and former bigwig in his Orange Democratic Movement, who has become the most venomous voice against the proposed constitution, Kalenjin ally-turned-archfoe William Ruto, the Higher Education Minister.
But Raila is one of the country's most calculating politicians, so if that were all, he wouldn't be fighting so hard.
However, the high population growth over the past 20 years in Nairobi, Western Kenya and the Coastal areas, where he and his ODM have done well lately, secures his political future because these places will become constituency-rich.
All opinion polls show that those pushing for a new constitution will win a victory in the August 4 referendum. The "Yes" side has consistently been shown to have more than double the support of the "No" side.
"It will mark the end of the Moi era," says Njoki Ndung'u, a member of the committee of legal experts that put together the draft.
By taking power and resources to the regions, the new constitution could unlock long-trapped energies that could see the return of the economic prosperity and competitiveness.
The East African: - News|Why East Africa and the world should care how Kenya votes on August 4

MY TAKE: so all these noises is about power? these people are not one of ours but from the moon! Pweuuuu

 

[GreedyKenyan]

On Wednesday 4th August at 8am, yours trully will be at Uhuru Gardens Primary School in Langata constituency Nairobi to exercise his democratic right by voting YEEEEEESSSSSS!!!!!! kATIBA NI SASA.

 

[Smatta]

A great constitution that will pass on 4th August, Inshallah. God bless Kenya

ps.. your opinion doesnt count, this is the best thing that kenya has had since the introduction of multipartism in '92. So if you think that this is all about power, then you are wrong, this constitution is our future as a united country.

 

[Kamaka]

Kenya is not united.ze constitution will not pass

 

[Aza]

viva kenya hope its for good n peace within the region...
get off al-shabab

 

[RealDeal]

For once Kenya can say, time has come to stand up for we. I like the devolution part of the constitution. And it will definitely pass.

 

[Smatta]

Kenya is not united.ze constitution will not pass

You are wrong son, very wrong. This constitution will pass and you will hail it as one of the best in Africa, its a total overhaul of the system. This is the Kenya rebirth we have been waiting for, a breath of fresh air.

 

[RealDeal]

Of course it's Yes, and on 4th, no doubt i'll cast my vote in Meru, and i'll be chewing them Green leaves, African herb rather.

 

[asagulaga]

Nawatakia wakenya maamuzi mazuri juu ya mustakabali wa hali yao ya baadaye. Upande utakaoshindwa basi ukubali kushindwa na kisha endelea kuijenga Kenya yenu kwa kasi nzuri.

 

[Ab-Titchaz]

Mkuu AB, who is this mean looking guy with a gangsterish type of name in the Kenyan's political scene?

Aliyevaa T-shirt ya green ndiye mkulu kwa jina Stanley Livondo. Huyu mwenye sura ya kutisha ni
mpambe wake aka bodyguard.

 

[Utingo]

And why the NO are in red?

 

[Utingo]

Aliyevaa T-shirt ya green ndiye mkulu kwa jina Stanley Livondo. Huyu mwenye sura ya kutisha ni
mpambe wake aka bodyguard.

What is so special about him? mungiki sponsor?

 

[RealDeal]

If, as widely predicted, Kenya gets a new constitution this week, it will be the only country in the region where the Cabinet is appointed from technocrats and professionals nominated from the private sector.

The East African:  - News |Referendum win offers hope for a new dawn

 

[Mlachake]

And why the NO are in red?

I've also been wondering!
Who came up with the formular?
where does the money to print these things come from?
:A S-confused1::A S-confused1::A S-confused1::A S-confused1::A S-confused1::A S-confused1::A S-confused1::A S-confused1::A S-confused1:

 

[GreedyKenyan]

I've also been wondering!
Who came up with the formular?
where does the money to print these things come from?

The Interim Independent Electoral Commision (IIEC) chose the colours as the symbols for the referendum. If you recall during the 2005 referendum, YES had a banana and NO had an orange. YES has green colours and NO red colours a. The different teams have been holding fund raisings through dinners etc.

 

[maliza]

Of course it's Yes, and on 4th, no doubt i'll cast my vote in Meru, and i'll be chewing them Green leaves, African herb rather.

Hoping those herbs wont be banned by an international treaty soon. Mpande mapela

 

[Nyaralego]

I like the colour green. It's a Go. PEACE!

 

[The Quonquerer]

You are wrong son, very wrong. This constitution will pass and you will hail it as one of the best in Africa, its a total overhaul of the system. This is the Kenya rebirth we have been waiting for, a breath of fresh air.

The only reason i want you guys to get along, is that i don't like seeing illegal immigrants flocking into my country. No no! We are fed up of desperate unruly neighbors! But will that even help?