Two years before the death of Kenya’s founding President Jomo Kenyatta, a group of overzealous politicians from his Mt Kenya heartland politically referred to as the Kiambu mafia hatched a sinister scheme.
The group started a clamour to have the constitution amended to bar the vice president from automatically ascending to the presidency upon the death of the head of state.
They traversed the country vouching for their proposed constitutional amendments, exposing their tribal jingoism to block then Vice President Daniel Moi from succeeding Kenyatta.
Given that Moi was a Kalenjin from Baringo, the group looked down upon him and never considered that a non-Kikuyu could assume the presidency.
The talk was that the presidential motorcade should never go beyond River Chania – a coded language by the Kiambu mafia that the presidency should never slip out of their hands.
The clamour for constitutional amendment started after the hotly contested 1974 general election but reached its zenith two years later when proponents launched countrywide campaigns.
Kenyatta had by then started showing signs of ill-health. In their countrywide campaigns, the Kiambu group preached the ‘dangers’ that lurked if Moi succeeded Kenyatta.
The mafia was wary of any politician who remotely seemed like a successor of the ageing founder of the nation who had suffered his first stroke in 1969.
Later, accounts by political brokers within the corridors of power as the intrigues unfolded recorded that Jomo never wanted Moi to succeed him contrary to public perception then.
In the book —The Life and Times of Senator Nathaniel Kalya— a senator who was deeply involved in the political intrigues of those heady days, he notes that Kenyatta did not entertain the plans by the Kiambu mafia.
This however did not stop the influential group from aggressively working to stop Moi in his tracks to succeed his boss at the State House. Kalya was the founding senator of Nandi and later MP for Mosop and Tinderet constituencies.
His tales are captured in the book by his son Wilson Kalya and historian Godfrey Sang.
The campaign later fizzled out after then-Attorney General Charles Njonjo issued a terse statement.
“It is a criminal offence for any person to encompass, imagine, devise, or intend the death or deposition of the President,” Njonjo wrote then in 1977.
Kenyatta followed the statement with his own from the State House, saying the government “reiterated the statement by the Attorney General.”
Njonjo’s statement followed charged rally in Tinderet that endorsed Taita Toweett to succeed Moi as Kanu VP in the election that were slated for later that year.
Unlike Moi, a primary school teacher who nevertheless had a commanding presence, the diminutive and eccentric MP from Bureti in Kericho had studied at Alliance, Makerere and in South Africa.
Upon the death of Jomo in August of 1978, Moi was sworn in as president and would rule for a quarter of a century, charming, outwitting or crushing his opponents, defying predictions that he would be a passing cloud or a louse that would be crushed with one hand as Kihika Kimani put it.
Moi, though saved from the change the constitution proponents, went ahead to change the constitution, making Kenya officially a one-party state giving him grip, power and ammunition to deal with his political opponents.
Anyone who differed with him was expelled from Kanu, marking the end of their political career.
Nearly half a century since politicians schemed the botched push to amend the constitution to block Moi from ascending to power, the country has been gripped in another clamour to review the supreme law of the land.
This time around, President William Ruto is in the spotlight as his key ally pushes for an extension of the presidential term limit.
While the President has previously disowned the proposal, the fact that the initiative has gathered pace and reached the crucial stage of public participation at the Senate has raised eyebrows.
Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei, a member of Ruto’s party, has proposed a radical amendment to the constitution, adding his bid to many others that have sought to extend the term of the president.
The proposal, put forward in the form of the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2024, seeks to extend the presidential term from the current five years to seven.
The same proposal seeks to also extend the terms of governors and MPs from five to seven years, triggering mixed reactions from the political class.
On the other hand, Kiambu Senator Karung’o Thang’wa has also proposed a constitutional amendment to slash the presidential term limit from five to four years.
He also wants all other elective leaders to serve a period of four years.
“Four years are enough for leaders to fulfill their mandate to Kenyans,” Thang’wa, an ally of impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, said when he unveiled his proposal on Wednesday.
“I have sent my proposals to have the term reduced from five years to four years. This is to ensure accountability of leaders.”
Currently, elected leaders serve a five-year term, with the constitution capping executive offices, such as the presidency and governorships, at two terms.
The Senate is already processing the controversial Bill and has invited Kenyans to submit their views by Friday amid outrage over what a section of analysts have termed as curious and sinister.
The Bill has been undergoing public participation since October 2, before the Senate Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs with public hearings planned for Friday.
“The committee will hold a public hearing on the Bill on Friday, October 25, 2024, at 9am in the Senate Chamber, Parliament Buildings, Nairobi. Members of the public are welcome to attend this hearing,” reads in part an invite by Senate clerk Jeremiah Nyegenye.
However, President Ruto has distanced himself from Chereragei’s bid to extend the president’s term.
The head of state reiterated his commitment to uphold the constitution, urging lawmakers to resist attempts to alter term limits for personal or political gain.
“I remain committed to upholding and defending the letter and spirit of the constitution,’’ President Ruto said in a statement this month.
Ruto’s UDA of which Cherargei is a member, has disowned the senators’ proposal as “profoundly misguided and self-serving.”
In a statement, UDA secretary general Hassan Omar said the Bill seeks to deny the people regular opportunities to hold leadership to account and directly exercise sovereign power.
According to him, the proposed law does not seek to pursue any meaningful objectives beyond illegitimate, myopic and retrogressive ends.
“The party therefore dissociates itself from the repugnant and backward Bill and calls any of its rank and file who leads, supports or is, in any manner whatsoever, involved with it, to order: The Bill is incompatible with our policy and aspirations. This juvenile political experimentation and delinquent affront to our constitutional values must now be crushed to a halt!” Omar said.
This is not the first time politicians from the ruling UDA are pushing for a change of term limits.
In November 2022, months after Ruto was sworn in, Fafi MP Salah Yakub proposed that the presidential term limit be removed, and the age of presidential candidates running for the top seat, be reduced to 75.
However, President Ruto then dismissed the proposal, telling legislators from his party that he was not keen on supporting any constitutional change
“Do not spend your time pushing for selfish and self-serving legislation, like changing the constitution to remove term limits. My focus is service to the people,” Ruto said at the time.
In February 2018, Tiaty MP William Kamket received wide media coverage when, out of the blue, he proposed changes to the constitution.
Kamket, through his Constitution Amendment Bill 2018, advocated for the inclusion of the powerful position of prime minister and the scrapping of the position of deputy president.
Less than a month later, on March 9, then President Uhuru Kenyatta and his strident political nemesis, Raila Odinga, in a surprise maneuver, shook hands at the footsteps at Harambee House.
The two birthed what would later be known as the handshake that saw the two bury the political hatchet and decades of political animosity following the disputed 2017 presidential poll.
Raila, who had successfully petitioned Uhuru’s contentious presidential win on August 8, 2017, at the Supreme Court, only to stay away from the fresh presidential election on October 26, 2017, started agitating for constitutional change.
Through the Building Bridges Initiative formed immediately after the handshake, Raila has repeatedly said was advocating for a future “all-inclusive” government that will be devoid of cycles of violence that invariably manifest themselves every election year.
The courts later quashed the BBI push with the Supreme Court delivering its final judgment in March 2022.
It thus quashed hopes for a
referendum to increase government
positions, create 70 new constituencies, pick ministers from MPs
and increase funding to counties,
among other provisions.