Muigai wants MPs reduced to 100, ‘county burden’ slashed
By Samuel Kariuki, September 29, 2023
Former Attorney General Githu Muigai has proposed the reduction of the number of constituencies from 291 to 100 and the merging of counties to ease the financial burden of running them.
When he appeared before the National Dialogue Committee at Bomas of Kenya, Muigai accused politicians of altering the Bomas draft of the constitution in Naivasha to pave the way for the creation of additional constituencies and counties.
“We have too many constituencies and counties. We should be reducing them not increasing them. They are costing us a lot of money and quite a number of them are not viable,” Muigai said.
He added: “Any amendment of the Constitution should see the reduction of counties. Bring more counties together so that they can mobilise resources together and share them.”
The former AG said the legislature can achieve the two-third gender rule effortlessly if the Woman Rep seat was abolished and in its place two seats were created in every constituency, one for a woman and one for a man.
“We will achieve the 50-50 gender representation which is better than the 30 per cent we have currently,” he said.
Muigai said the various funds being implemented by MPs were illegal as they were not anchored in the law noting that public funds should be managed by the National Treasury at the national government level and by governors at the county level as per the constitution.
“There is no justification for Constituency Development Fund or Affirmative Action Fund. They have no place in our constitutional architecture. There should be money only on two levels, we have one government at two levels, the funds of the national government are in the treasury and the county funds are managed by the governor,” he explained.
Muigai faulted the current order where MPs are the appropriators of CDF yet they are the ones who debate the budget in the National Assembly then spend the money, saying it blurs their constitutional role of oversight.
On the restructuring of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), he proposed the formation of a constitutive body to interview those who qualify to occupy the positions of commissioners.