Filipinos can learn from Charter change in Kenya

Filipinos in general fancy themselves as more politically sophisticated than most Africans. So did I until I read about how Kenyans tackled difficult political problems that required drastic changes in their Constitution.

“Yes” to Charter change won with 5,954,767 million last Wednesday. That is 67.25 percent of the votes while ‘No’, 2,687,193 were only 30.35 percent.” There are over 12.4 million people in Kenya. That means 71 percent or nearly eight million people came out to make their voices heard, the electoral commission said.

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Immediately after the victory of yes votes Prime Minister Raila A. Odinga thanked President Mwai Kibaki for his support for the needed changes. “Kenyans recognize your efforts in stepping forward when our country needed it most and taking charge of the campaign for the Proposed Constitution,” Odinga said. The two were political rivals.

“Change has finally come to our land. It has come because we refused to give up. It has come because finally, we agreed to work together.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts whether the dreams of the founders of our nation are still with us, who still questions our people’s thirst for a better country and democracy, who still question whether Kenyans really want a break with the past, today we have the answer,” Odinga added.

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The Kenyan vote for Charter change has many lessons for us. Filipino advocates for Charter changes have been fighting for the cause far longer than the Kenyans.

I believe it is time to ask why past strategies have failed. For example, the youth of Kenya played a very special role to inform the voters of the changes and get the “yes” vote. Maina Kiai, a peace activist, was just one of several young Kenyans who took to the road to let their fellow citizens know what these constitutional issues were and what was at stake for them. They used inflatable screens to show a film on how the changes will promote peace.

“Ever since independence in 1963, Kenya has been ruled by a winner-take-all political system that has exacerbated ethnic divisions and steadily turned the country into one of the most corrupt on the continent,” writes New York Times. (CNP: It should sound familiar to Filipinos and the presidential system we have had since the US granted our independence in 1946.)

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We can learn from the events in Kenya . By studying this we can adopt new strategies for Charter change and find the answer why it has been blocked time and again. Isaack Hassan, chairman of the Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) said the “victory belonged to all Kenyans from all walks of life and therefore the need for all leaders to work together to unite everyone.”

In a statement to the press he commended Kenyans for conducting themselves with decorum and voting peacefully. It helped redeem the image of the country after the disputed presidential elections in 2008.?? More than a thousand people were killed in violent attacks after the elections.

“Dubious vote tallying was the immediate cause of the upheaval. Kenya’s corrupt and dysfunctional politics was deemed to be the root,” wrote Jeffrey Gettleman of New York Times.

Hassan of IIEC said “we have proved to ourselves and to others that we are better than what we saw in 2008. We have cleansed ourselves from the ghosts of 2008; it is a new dawn; the birth of a new Republic,” he added during the final tally.

However, Hassan admitted that the referendum process was difficult and there were also hitches like missing names in voters’ registers in the pilot of the electronic voting. He deplored the high number of spoilt votes and said that election officials need further training for future elections.

This is one of the challenges the Philippines also faces should a referendum on Charter change is held in the near future with a number of disputes about the May 10 elections still unresolved. Like the Kenyans we will need to re-think the automatic voting process and how to reform it to a standard to obtain undisputed results, otherwise we face a catastrophe.

“Conducting the referendum has given the IIEC the opportunity to learn lessons; to improve its systems and operations and procedures. We will go back to the drawing board and look at what happened during this process so that we can draw lessons on how we can improve for the future of the Commission,” the chairman said.

With this development it seems that the Kenyans and their leaders are more ready as they say “to bite the bullet” than we are. 

It may have been more violent in Kenya where it was reported that “roadblocks formed almost overnight, with rival gangs pulling people out of cars, checking their identity cards and beating them to death based on ethnicity” but our version of violent and dishonest elections is not far behind.

Only Charter change could curb Kenya’s imperial-style presidency and give more power to local government. It also paved the way for land reform and gives Kenyans a bill of rights, reports the New York Times.

Also worth noting is the behavior of donor nations. It was reported “the United States was so eager to see it pass that they have pumped millions of dollars into voter drives and civic education campaigns.”

But the donations and the US Embassy in Nairobi were criticized by several Republican politicians. It accused the embassy for taking sides.

“The Republicans say the new Kenyan Constitution would make it easier for women to get an abortion (a claim that constitutional scholars dispute) and that the embassy, by giving grants to Kenyan groups openly supporting the Constitution, has violated federal provisions prohibiting American diplomats from lobbying for or against abortion.

Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said Tuesday that “a very small percentage” of the civic education grants had gone to groups advocating for a “yes” vote but that this was “an accident and error.”

“We support a process, not an outcome,” he said, though recent statements from American officials have left little mystery as to which side the United States is on. At the same time, several American Christian groups have been working closely with Kenyan allies to mobilize people to defeat the Constitution,” the New York Times article added.

This gives a clue to why and how our own efforts at Charter change have been blocked for too long. The colonization of the Philippines was a Republican enterprise and American policy has remained faithful to that beginning.