By Patrick Tom Odongo
I am for constitutional changes that potentially enhance the sharing of power between those governing and those governed.
I am persuaded that the reality of leadership in this country at both the national and county government levels is that ascendancy to leadership is not motivated by service to the people, neither is leadership under compulsion to adhere to the rule of law or the principle of accountability.
In fact abuse of power and indifference to the rule of law by leaders have become normal.
The other reality is that the main attraction to leadership at present is power and extravagant lifestyle.
Leadership is not for pursuit of good for the people, it is self serving to the holders of leadership offices. From these observations, what appears to me as an area of constitutional change or legislative intervention that would make a difference to Kenyans concerns strengthening public participation institutionalization, widening public participation space in governance and furthering decentralization of power and resources to ward level so that citizen priorities form the basis of public spending guided by national policy.
When it comes to leadership there is need to introduce changes that will extinguish financial and lifestyle incentives to the would be leaders to discourage those motivated by financial benefits, ability to transact enormous power and access to luxury lifestyle at the expense of the tax payers.
Current governors’ lifestyle signifies the excesses in luxury spending to sustain lifestyle and the inadequacy of the accountability structures to oversight.
At this point paradoxically we are proposing expanding the Executive.
What we are doing is introducing opportunities for more people in leadership contest to access power, extravagant lifestyle and license to loot public resources in exchange for political non violent responses in the face of divisive electoral outcomes or electoral frauds.
Irrespective of whether this is affordable or not, this is leadership structure that is not design to improve governance but primarily preferred to reward and preserve bad and unhygienic politics as well as to retain the tenets of misgoverning.
The author is a Consulting Urban Planner