Thursday, November 19, 2009

Harmonised Constitution?

Someone referred to the draft constitution as lacking harmony... he could not have been more right. the draft lacks internal consistency. When I heard one Nzamba Kitonga go on and on about the principle of separation of powers, I wore a guarded smile. Guarded because I don't trust anyone who calls themselves experts... I prefer them to let me judge that for myself.I was nevertheless smiling because for the first time I thought Kenya will have an executive that does not have any member from the legislature and vice-versa.
I thought we are finally going to have a legislature that legislates, an executive that executes and mercifully a judiciary that arbitrates in the name of justice. Clearly I was mistaken. The so called Committee of Experts (COE from now henceforth since I can't bring myself to call them experts) lack even the basic knowledge of principles of governance, the theories of power etc. The most sorry part of this all is that the COE let themselves get dictated to by a bunch of know-it-alls and ne'er do wells who came to them submitting 'wisdom' under the banner of wanjiku. Its sad but true... just look at the clauses of the Central Bank. First of all, who even says that we necessarily need a Central Bank. Even if we decided we needed a Central Bank, do they know that the CBK is just but one player in the financial markets. Even then, the COE goes even further to prescribe a mandate that they know nothing of.
The primary responsibility of a Central Bank is to ensure price stability so that money in the economy can be viewed as a store of value, otherwise it loses other functions such as a unit of accounting or even a unit of exchange as no one would exchange their goods or services for certificates that are volatile in value or even valueless. Sadly COE did not think that they needed advice from experts from the fields of money, finance and economics so all we can do is stare at the draft in amazement before we can know what to do with it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

...well maybe 'COE' ,just like you, does not trust anyone who calls themselves an 'expert'. Just saying (JS). :-)