It’s never easy to let go, but devolution’s time has come

Several Bills intended to usher in devolved government in Kenya are now in the public domain. Apart from the Devolved Government Bill emanating from the Task Force on Devolved Government, we have the Transition to Devolved Government Bill and the Intergovernmental Relations Bill.

The Bills cover a plethora of issues: The composition and powers of the 47 county governments; how to transit from the Provincial Administration and current decentralised financing mechanisms (no less than 14 decentralised funds already exist) to the county governments. It also established an oversight body, the County Transition Authority, to plan and supervise the transition; a conflict resolution body, the National and County Government Co-ordinating Council to mediate disputes between the national and county governments; and the Council of County Governors to mediate disputes among counties.

It’s getting hard to follow. Not to mention farther and farther away from the original idea of bringing government — and accountability of government — closer to the people. Complex rather than simple arrangements obviously mitigate against public participation.

It’s also, predictably, getting contentious. Members of the task force that drafted the Devolved Government Bill this past week sounded the alarm over changes in wording that imply that the county governors will serve at the president’s discretion — rather than in accordance with the intentions of the Constitution. Their fear is that the central government is already planning how not to let go.

This fear is probably well founded. Any central government would be worried. Worried from a purely administrative/bureaucratic perspective about simple accounting matters — particularly given the scandals that continue to pop up just in respect of the existing decentralised funds. But also worried in a more political sense. Such as the equal application of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights across the country. Think here, for example, of the multitude of reported informal power-sharing pacts between majority and minority ethnicities in more ethnically heterogeneous countries that are already being entered into. Or again, of what it means for patronage possibilities to slip out of the hands of those who control the central government to the county level — political leverage is no doubt lost.

Which was, of course, part of the point of devolution!

Having delegated, the principals — in this case the executive as a whole — are naturally faced with the problem of controlling their agents.

It is hard to let go — for all of us, in all areas of life. So we shouldn’t imagine that it will be easy for our executive and its functional hand of the civil service to let go. As discredited as our executive and civil service had become, their dysfunction obviously benefited some. Change will cost those who’ve benefited from the dysfunction. Nobody gives up benefits or pays costs without resisting.

The point is how to predict and mitigate those losses so that change is not impeded. And how to situate this stream of little battles in the bigger picture so it is clear what our executive and civil service might legitimately (if erroneously) be fighting for. Bearing in mind that the executive and the civil service are, in fact, our agents. We’re the principals. Thanks to the Constitution. 

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is doing her graduate studies at L’Institut d’etudes politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris, France