Boundaries the next battleground among politicians
By Eric Wainaina, July 30, 2020Supremacy contest among politicians is set to move to delimitation of constituency boundaries as the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) prepares to kick-start the process.
IEBC chair Wafula Chebukati told People Daily the commission has kicked off the process which will entail collecting views from the public, adding they will also be guided by last year’s census results as released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).
“The commission has commenced some of the activities including procurement of requisite tools for use during the exercise, staff capacity building and desktop review of the data presented to it by the KNBS.
The commission shall provide an elaborate roadmap underpinning the framework of the review upon extensive consultations with stakeholders and upon endorsement of the protocols to management of Covid-19,” Chebukati said.
IEBC is expected to consider geographical features and urban centres, community of interest, historical, economic and cultural ties; and means of communication of a region while deciding if an area fit to be a constituency or a ward.
Delimitation
Article 89(2) of the Constitution requires IEBC to undertake the delimitation of boundaries between eight and 12 years. The last such exercise was undertaken in February 2012.
The Constitution demands the population of a constituency be higher or lower than its quota by 40 per cent for cities and sparsely populated areas, and 30 per cent for other areas.
The quota is arrived at by dividing the total population of the country as per the 2019 counting by the 290 constituencies.
The Constitution demands that boundaries of every constituency or ward be informed by population quota, a figure obtained by dividing the number of Kenyans by constituencies.
Using this formula, the population quota in the planned review will be 164,014—the critical figure the IEBC will use to determine the fate of constituencies using the set criteria.
This means constituencies in urban cities and sparsely populated areas will have a maximum of 229,621, and a minimum of 98,409.
All other areas will have a population of a maximum of 213,219 and a minimum of 114,819.
Additionally, the Commission is required to take account of geographical features and urban centres; community of interest, historical, economic and cultural ties; and means of communication of a region.
The boundaries’ row comes hot on heels of the ongoing deadlock pitting senators over the proposed third generation formula which lays emphasis on population and which has been opposed by leaders from less populated regions who claim it will further marginalize their region.
While those from populous regions are campaigning to have some of their electoral areas split for fair representation and equal sharing of resources, politicians from sparsely populated areas are opposed to population being used as the only yardstick for determining boundaries.
For example, leaders from Kiambu county with a population of 2.4 million people, according to the last counting and Meru with 1.54 million people are agitating that they be split into two geographical regions while MPs representing constituencies like Ruiru with about half a million people and Kanduyi in Bungoma with over 300,000 people) want them split up to three times.
Densely populated
The bone of contention is that densely populated regions could get more counties, constituencies and wards leading to an increase in the number of elected leaders and additional allocation of resources while less populated areas will either keep what they have or lose some.
Kanduyi MP Wafula Wamunyinyi is for instance, pushing for the split of the constituency into three for equality in representation and fair distribution of resources.
“The clamour for more constituencies is because if you are saying that constituencies get equal amounts in terms of bursaries, and one has a population of 300,000 people while another has 70,000 people, and assuming that you allocate them Sh100 million, don’t you find it unfair,” Wamunyinyi told People Daily.
Leaders from Kiambu among them Limuru MP Peter Mwathi have already started a campaign to have the county split into two -Kiambu East and Kiambu West.
“IEBC should critically take into account geographical features of urban centres, community of interest as well as the social- economics of the county. It should also dawn on the commission that our county is literally cosmopolitan and virtually an extension of Nairobi,” Mwathi said.
Imenti North MP Rahim Dawood, John Paul Mwiri (Igembe South), Maoka Maore (Igembe North) and John Mutunga (Tigania West) are also agitating for the split of Meru county to create Nyambene and Imenti counties due to its expansiveness, population and the number of electoral constituencies.
Nyambene region would comprise Tigania West, Tigania East, Igembe North, Igembe Central and Igembe South constituencies under such arrangement while Imenti would comprise Imenti South, Imenti Central, Imenti North and Buuri constituencies.
While the commission has no power to reduce the constituencies from the set 290, it has the power to merge and propose new constituencies but has the latitude to change the number of wards from the current 1,450.
But the topic is also subject of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) debate where leaders from populous regions have demanded the introduction of the proportional representation system to attain equality of the vote by increasing the number of constituencies but those from less populated ones want their areas considered based on landmass.
Observers and leaders agreed that the process of the delimitation will be controversial, saying the current stalemate in the senate over the sharing of revenue.