Kenyan president concedes referendum defeat
Kenyans soundly rejected a constitution that critics said did too little to limit presidential powers, its chief proponent President Mwai Kibaki conceded today.
The vote, after a bitter campaign in which at least seven people died in referendum-related violence, delivered the most serious setback yet to Kibaki, who is accused of having done too little to set himself apart from the corruption and autocracy long associated with politics in the east African country.
Kenyans in a vote yesterday rejected the proposed constitution by 57% to 43%, Samuel Kivuitu, chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya, said today.
The current constitution will remain in force.
“Many people rejected the proposed constitution,” Kibaki said in an address to the nation today.
“My government will respect the verdict of the people.”
The referendum was cast by Kibaki’s critics as a chance for voters to express their opinion of the president two years ahead of the next presidential race.
The campaign was rarely about the provisions of the draft charter – whether the prime minister it proposed would have enough independence or whether enough powers were being devolved from the long-dominant central government to local administrations.
Instead, Kenyans were asked to consider whether Kibaki had kept promises he made during his 2002 presidential campaign to foster democracy and accountability and root out the corruption that had become endemic under the 24-year rule of his predecessor, President Daniel arap Moi.
Kibaki had pledged in October 2002 that if he became president he would ensure Kenya got a new constitution within his first 100 days.
Since winning the presidency, he has repeatedly faced charges his government was reluctant to adopt a new charter unless it satisfied the interests of those in power.
In the first year of his presidency, Kibaki was applauded for going after politicians associated with corruption.
But those politicians were linked to the Moi regime. In his second year in office, when the focus turned to corruption in high places in his own administration, Kibaki stumbled, many Kenyans believe.
Musambayi Katumanga, a political scientist at the University of Nairobi, said Kibaki needed to distance himself from political allies “steeped in corruption”.
“If he doesn’t, then they (the opponents of the draft constitution) will bury him with his presidency,” Katumanga said.
In an attempt to push through the proposed new constitution, Kibaki allied himself with members of Moi’s Kenya African National Union, the party he had reviled during his presidential campaign three years ago. Critics said Kibaki, like Moi, wanted absolute power.
“The defeat of the proposed constitution shows that the future of the country lies not in an imperial presidency, but in accountable leadership,” said Uhuru Kenyatta, who led the campaign opposing the new constitution.
Kenya’s current constitution, drawn up in the lead-up to Kenya’s 1963 independence from Britain, has been revised several times to create a strong unitary state in which the president has sweeping powers.
The rejected new constitution was crafted by Attorney General Amos Wako, a Kibaki ally who combined a draft created by a National Constitutional Conference in March 2004 and one proposed by parliament in July.
Wako’s 197-page combination appeared closer to parliament’s draft, which critics had charged gave the president too much power and contained provisions that were rejected by the constitutional conference.
Like parliament, Wako proposed a prime minister who would be appointed – and could be dismissed – by the president.
Some had argued that the only legitimate draft emerged from the constitutional conference and an earlier exercise to solicit the views of Kenyans across the country.
Opponents who defeated the proposed constitution say they will keep pressing for a new one. But they may find that difficult, given that Kibaki enjoys great powers under the current constitution and may now be in no mood for a reform campaign.
“Now that we have spent a lot of our energy and resources on the constitution debate and the politics associated with it, it is now time to refocus our energies more intensively to development,” Kibaki, an economist by training but a politician for 45 years, said today.
