CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DEVOLVING POWER

The Challenges:

Every governance structure has its strengths and weaknesses when viewed in a particular historical and social context. Consequently, in order for any system to be in tandem with the peoples’ past experiences and future aspirations, it must be subjected to constant critical assessment, review and adjustment.

For more than 44 years, however, we have operated under an overly centralized unitary government system. The system has negated the very essential need to embrace local or peripheral views as the bedrock of local level governance. Our people at the grassroots have been mere spectators of the development policies and national resource allocation, expenditure, as all these policies are formulated and executed by the centre and its agents.

The greatest need for us now is to devise ways of reviewing our unitary system because it has proved largely ineffective and inefficient. It has bred vast inequalities in incomes and well-being. It has led to regional disparities in infrastructural development as well as partiality in the provision of healthcare, education and other social amenities. Kenya today has the dubious distinction of being the third most income unequal country in the world.

The challenge of deciding on whether or not Kenyans need devolution squarely belongs solely to the people. Devolution is a political concept that denotes the transfer of political, administrative and legal authority, power and responsibility from the centre to the lower levels of government.

Our Commitments:

We will reform the system of governance to empower local communities. By so doing, we will enable the transfer of power to communities with strong democratic and accountable local level governance structures.

We will disperse power to communities and engage our people in active citizenship by involving them directly in the management of their neighborhoods and the services they use. We will do this because we vehemently believe that devolution without democracy is just tyranny on a local scale.

We will entrench the CDF by raising budgetary allocations according to need and local demands.

We will ensure transparency and accountability in its administration.

We will respect communities and recognize the fact that they have distinct needs and ambitions. We will focus on the reality that wananchi are genuinely concerned about what happens in their neighborhoods and want to be involved in the decisions that affect them whether they reside in Karen or Kariobangi. We will also recognize that too often these ambitions are thwarted by authoritarian micro-management, corruption and centralization of our central government structures.

Your ODM Government will:

• Establish a framework for even and equitable development of all the regions of the country