A civil society group in Bungoma county is demanding an additional constituency by collecting signatures to present to the proponents of the Building Bridges Initiative.
In a memorandum, the residents claim that Bungoma and Meru counties deserve an extra constituency each based on population while they want city status for Kisumu and Mombasa recognised.
“We the undersigned have taken time to read and understand the 2020 draft Bill to amend the Constitution of Kenya 2010. We remain cognisant and appreciate this opportunity to give some post-mortem/observation on the report gazetted on the 25th of November 2020”.
It continues, “We applaud the task force under your leadership, your efforts and commitment for coming up with such a wonderful document. Having now dissected the report, we are largely happy because many of our wishes have been captured and perfectly reflected in the report”.
Executive director of Western Kenya Human Rights Watch Job Bwonya argues the petition has been informed by the inconsistencies and rounding up of the proposed 70 constituencies to the nearest whole number and what appears to be a uniform or selective application of the national population quota regardless of the classifications of the 28 counties.
Bwonya added, “We further believe that the BBI task force put into consideration the criteria and methodology used by IEBC in the last review of constituency’s boundaries”.
He said that cities are supposed to be within the limits of 40 per cent above the population quota, sparsely populated areas within the limits of at least 40 per cent below the population quota, while other areas within the limits of 30 per cent below or above the population quota.
Sparsely populated counties include Mandera, Turkana, Kajiado and Narok. The remaining 21 counties are classified as other areas.
“We have no problem with the counties classified as sparsely populated areas, but the discrimination is in calculating apportionment of the 70 constituencies in counties of the three cities and the 21 counties,” he said.
He said that since Mombasa and Kisumu are cities, they should also have been subjected to the same population quota that was used to apportion constituencies to Nairobi. Unfortunately, it appears that this was not the case.