Same script but different actors on devolution

Prof Munene, who teaches at USIU observes that Jaramogi was executing the majimbo plot with full blessings from Kenyatta, “who only found in his VP an appropriate and ardent fixer to the majimbo threat”. Jaramogi himself admits that he believed – at that time – in a unitary system of government.

“It (majimbo) inevitably produced duplication of functions, erratic and unco-ordinated planning. There was an additional danger that money would be spent not on essential administration and services, but on politics and prestige,” Jaramogi argues in his book.

Shot down

Decades later, former Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Kiraitu Murungi appeared to borrow a leaf from Kenyatta’s government, when he spearheaded the Narc government’s campaign to shoot down proposals to decentralise power, including creation of the office of Prime Minister as Head of Government. Under the famed mantra of “we cannot create two centres of power”, Kiraitu discarded the document prepared by the Yash Pal Ghai-led review commission and replaced it with a document with totally new proposals. It is on the latter document that Kenyans voted for or against in the 2005 constitutional referendum. The wish of the proponents of a centralised government was not granted.

The players in the 1963 power game spearheaded by Jaramogi and in 2005 led by Kiraitu might be different, but the script is the same, even today. In frustrating majimbo, for instance, Jaramogi made administrative reshuffles by posting administrators in the same fashion as did Kibaki when he posted the CCs to counties in 2012, in an apparent move to water down the political influence of holders of the office of governor as constituted under the new 2010 dispensation.

Same fashion

Opposition party chiefs led by Ronald Ngala and Daniel Moi were highly opposed to Jaramogi’s move, asserting it was a deliberate move to undermine majimbo. Paradoxically, Jaramogi’s own son, former Prime Minister, would complain in a similar fashion about a similar move by President Kibaki (in posting CCs) a half a century later.

Now operatives under the current Uhuru administration appear to be attempting “a Jaramogi” and “a Kiraitu” combined, to win back centralised power, which they lost substantially following the creation of a second layer of county governments, or devolved system of government.

“Majimbo Constitution” lasted only eleven months, while the devolved system of government is two years old and soldering on amid loud murmurs about attempts to kill it.

Comparing Kenya’s institutionalised corruption to some huge garbage dump that has grown bigger over the years, Michela blames it all on the administrative rot in government that has left little or no difference between the colonial and post-colonial administrations.