Former Attorney General Githu Muigai now claims that Parliament has too many leaders and that there should be a plan to reduce the number of constituencies as well as eliminate a few political positions.
Speaking before the National Dialogue Committee (NDC) Professor Githu suggested reducing the constituencies to approximately 100, each represented by one man and one woman.
“We have too many people in Parliament, we have too many constituencies and counties. They are costing us a lot of money. Reduce the constituencies to about 100 and have one man and one woman in each,” he said.
Muigai explained that when he participated in the drafting of the Kenyan Constitution in 2004 at the Bomas of Kenya, in what became known as the Bomas draft, the suggestion was to have only 14 counties.
However, the former AG noted that politicians later changed their tune and increased the number.
“They came up with a compromise of let’s go to 41 counties,” he explained.
Muigai said that were their Constitution draft to be reopened, one issue that could be useful would be the reduction of counties.
“Bring more counties together and let them work together and mobilize resources together and share together,” he continued.
The prominent lawyer also stated that the two-thirds gender rule should be abandoned in favour of a 50/50 representation in government.
The prominent lawyer described it as a “women empowerment rule,” and suggested that there should be widespread awareness of the issue, as well as the elimination of a few political positions reserved for women.
“There is a feeling amongst Kenyans that we have not done enough to justify this. We need more civic education on empowering women…empowering a community.
“We need to abolish the Woman Rep seat, we create two positions in the constituency. We will achieve 50 percent, and it will be cheaper,” he said.
Githu Muigai also advocated for mechanisms to enforce party loyalty. He proposed that elected officials should maintain fidelity to the party under which they were elected, and crossing the floor should result in the loss of one’s seat.
