I watched Dr Rev David Oginde and Judy Thongori on K24 debating the Proposed Constitution and a few things pricked my mind.

What are the real issues that affect the lives of Kenyans that we would like sorted out?

I did a quick evaluation and settled on 6 serious issues; Poverty, corruption, tribalism. resource imbalance, governance and land. Kadhi’s Courts and Abortion did not feature in the issues I want settled.

I do not know what your take is on these issues, but I want to believe that Kenyans are more concerned with the rising levels of poverty as opposed to anything else. If the new constitution can address this issue, I will vote Yes.

We all know how corruption has been an issue in Kenya. We have had several scandals that have made life unbearable for the common man. How best would it have been to see our leaders mount a spirited campaign against corruption as a vice in Kenya. But, reality is that we have many leaders who benefit one way or another from corruption.

Tribalism is a vice that we would all want to see wiped out, yet, we have not mounted a spirited campaign against it as we are doing now with either the Kadhi’s Courts and/or abortion. How best would we as Kenyans been led from the front by these people who love Kenyan more than they love Kenyans in fighting against tribalism.

For a long time, we have had resource distribution imbalance in the country. We had for a long time been used to hearing that funds are not available for projects which were to be undertaken in areas not friendly to the powers that be. This was somehow rectified with the introduction of the abused CDF system and yet, we have never mounted any serious campaign to help address the resource distribution imbalance. And yet this affects Kenyans more than some of these issues we are making noise about.

Governance controls everything in the land. Judiciary as an independent arm of government is still firmly under the control of the Executive to an extent that it is the President who appoints the supposedly independent Chief Justice and the Judicial Service Commission. The Executive powers of the Presidency is what has made Kenya what we are now. It has led to the subjugation of justice, theft of public property, impunity and has made corruption thrive in our nascent economy. Yet, we have never risen up and made noise about this.

My last issue was the land question. We all know that we have many Kenyans who do not have land. And we have few Kenyans who own land, a lot of it. They are so fearful that Kenyans might gain when law on land ownership takes root. This is still a very emotive issue that I would have been happy to join any group making noise about the land issues and how some top cream Kenyans own large tracks of land.

The sad reality is, we have chosen to address issues that do not concern us and downplayed the real issues for which we should fight.

If my Church Leader came to me to join him in rejecting the constitution on account of our poverty, rampant tribalism in government, resource distribution imbalance, land acquisition, corrupt and inept governance that allows avarice to thrive, I would have heard them and joined them in their saying NO.

But on Kadhi’s Court and Abortion, honestly, we have serious issues that affect us daily.

Odhiambo T Oketch