Raila's relentless pursuit for a just constitution

Kenyans celebrated the momentous occasion when former Constitution of Kenya Review Commission (CKRC) chairman Yash Pal Ghai returned to Kenya in December 2000 to write a new constitution.

At Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), he was received by the then MP for Langata, Raila Odinga, who had been elected to chair the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on the review of the constitution.

A year earlier, Raila had agreed to work with then President Daniel Arap Moi after the former president’s point man, the late Mark Too, aka Bwana Dawa, brokered a deal between the opposition and the ruling party elites.

After the 1997 General Election, Raila merged forces with Mwai Kibaki and Kijana Wamalwa, promising to form a united front to hold the government accountable, as their combined number of MPs gave them an absolute majority in parliament.

Little did his opposition colleagues know that he had struck a deal with President Moi’s hatchet man, the late Too, to support Kanu in parliament. That was the first of many handshakes Raila has had with the party in power.

He was subsequently rewarded with the honour of leading the reforms process after the Kenya African National Union (Kanu) and his National Development Party (NDP) MPs supported his nomination as PSC chairman on the review process.

He zealously took on the task of reviewing the constitution by leading the establishment of the necessary legislative framework, which created the Constitution of Kenya Review Act 2008 — the foundation for the creation of the CKRC.

Raila then helped Ghai merge the government-supported review process with a parallel group called the Ufungamano Initiative. Commissioners from the two groups collected and collated views from Kenyans and later convened at the Bomas of Kenya for a national conference to prepare a review draft widely supported by Kenyans.

However, a section of leaders allied to then President Mwai Kibaki later made drastic changes to the draft when the late Simeon Nyachae, then chair of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the constitution met in Kilifi to prepare for a referendum.

The 2005 referendum was held in a poisoned political environment created by mistrust and broken promises among the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) coalition partners that united the Raila and Kibaki factions.

Raila campaigned against that draft constitution and defeated it despite efforts by Kibaki. He complained that the doctored draft allowed the President to appoint and sack the Prime Minister at will, negating the noble objectives of the Bomas draft.

The opposition leader was, however, blamed for supporting the watering down of the Bomas draft at the 2009 Naivasha Accord, where the parliamentary system of government was dropped in favour of a presidential model. The Bomas conference had also recommended a strong Senate or upper house and no more than 14 county governments. The Party of National Unity under former President Kibaki and ODM led by Raila, however, compromised by reducing the powers of the Senate and increasing counties to 47.

Before his death, Raila was making frantic efforts to spearhead another constitutional review to enact what delegates had agreed upon at the Bomas conference. He teamed up with then President Uhuru Kenyatta to initiate the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) in 2018 and managed to collect enough signatures to support the review process. The effort was, however, thwarted after the courts declared it unconstitutional.

Shortcomings

More recently, Raila called for a national conclave to discuss issues raised by Gen Z in June 2024. He repeatedly emphasised that it was time for Kenya to examine the 2010 Constitution to address its shortcomings. “Kenyans met at the Bomas of Kenya and deliberated for a very long time and came up with a very progressive constitution. That constitution was bastardised to a certain extent during the so-called Naivasha process,” said Raila, urging Kenyans to return to the Bomas draft constitution.

The Bomas Draft was a draft constitution featuring key reforms, among them a bicameral legislature with a Senate and a National Assembly, a hybrid executive system with both a President and a Prime Minister, and strong provisions for leadership integrity and devolution.

The calls for a return to the Bomas Draft have received mixed reactions because many Kenyans argue that the 2010 constitution has not been fully implemented.