The Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD) launched its Okoa Kenya campaign this past week, aimed at collecting a million signatures in support of its call for a constitutional referendum.

The launch achieved rather more of a bang than expected. For it was attended by Martha Karua and supported by Peter Kenneth. It was also explicitly endorsed by John Githongo and Richard Leakey.

But is a constitutional referendum the best strategy to get the issues on CORD’s agenda addressed?

Nobody disputes the raft of unconstitutional legislation that’s been passed since last year — undermining some of the most important constitutional gains from 2010, such as the independence and accountability of the security services and devolution. But unconstitutional legislation can, in theory, be dealt with through the courts — even if belief in the courts has itself been undermined.

Nobody disputes that the Constitution isn’t perfect. It couldn’t be, being a product of negotiations in which essentially politicians had the last say. Whose interests were and remain largely about political power — not about fully addressing popular concerns that 2007-8 had brought starkly to the fore.

That said, is the problem today the Constitution itself? Even in its imperfect state? Or is the problem what we’d always been warned about before — the lack of constitutionalism? The contempt with which both the executive and the legislature apparently hold the Constitution?

Do we really need more reform of the ultimate policy framework? Or do we need a concerted, precise focusing in on, narrowing down on, breaches in practice and what to do about them?

CORD’s main concerns are, ostensibly, security, equality, the cost of living, devolution, the electoral system and land. It’s clear that all these concerns have popular resonance. But what’s the promise on each one of them? And what’s the overarching appeal to the public?

Not in a reactive way — drawing solely on dissatisfaction with the Jubilants (ruling party supporters), appealing to the worst of us. But in a proactive way — holding out a promise that appeals to the best of us?

To return to our not-so-distant past, there were a multitude of dissatisfactions and grievances that lay behind what became the constitutional change movement of the 1990s.

The promises on resolving all those dissatisfactions and grievances were presented as being legal and institutional. With the overarching appeal being structural. Everybody may have hated the hardliners in the Kenya African National Union (Kanu). But the movement wasn’t built on hate — it was built on the promise of a Constitution under which we all could thrive.

Some of us may hate the hardliners amongst the Jubilants — and wrongly extend that hatred to ethnic groups associated with the Jubilants in a way that certainly did not happen to the same degree in the 1990s in respect of the ethnic groups associated with Kanu.

And CORD, like the constitutional change movement of the 1990s, cannot build a movement based on hate — it has to give us a promise under which we all believe we can thrive.

Okoa Kenya? There’s a lot more thinking to be done.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is Amnesty International’s regional director for East Africa, covering East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes. This column is written in her personal capacity