Public gets chance to give views on devolved funds

The public hearings on the 2012/13 budgetary proposals launched by the Treasury on Tuesday are expected to provide yet another test case on the ability of citizens to engage and bargain with the Executive on key governance issues.

The Treasury has unveiled a general outline on how it expects to spend Sh1.14 trillion to roll out transitional structures.

While the essence of devolution is to improve service delivery, most of the citizens who made their presentations at the public forum did not have a clear idea of how fiscal decentralisation works.

However, the Constitution says their views matter.

“We will monitor these public hearings keenly because our mandate is to ensure that the Budget policy statement that comes to Parliament next month fairly reflects what citizens want,” said Elias Mbau, chairman of the Parliamentary Budgetary Committee.

“We expect Treasury officials to take advantage of this period of interaction with citizens to clearly explain to them the budgetary constraints so as to tame their expectations.”

The public is expected to dissect through the figures that policy makers have arrived at after long hours of technical analyses to ensure that their interests are safeguarded.

They are also supposed to question some of the economic assumptions made in the 2012/13 estimates even as they share with economic planners the pain that inflation and a weaker shilling have inflicted on them.

They are expected to query state’s growing appetite for external loans and get assurance that their national sovereignty is not exposed to control by external forces.

Most importantly, communities should take advantage of the public hearings to legitimately bargain for their piece of the national cake beside dictating how resources should be managed.

Speaking at a different forum held in Nairobi recently, Chief Justice Willy Mutunga said: “Public participation is a hallmark of this Constitution that citizens must be vigilant about.”

It is a worthy story to tell 10 years after former president Daniel arap Moi collectively personified ordinary citizens as “Wanjiku” in a first official attempt to institutionalise their participation in public affairs.

A class that has traditionally been relegated to the peripheral role in governance issues has suddenly acquired constitutional powers to end subjugation by the ruling elite. From her time-honoured status as a taker of every decision that affects the public, the Constitution envisages Wanjiku as a purveyor general of every thought that shapes her ability to create wealth.

Yet with just a few tests so far, partisan politics and ethnic consideration are getting in the way of ordinary citizens’ quest to rewrite the rules of public governance even as the state begins to redirect resources to the grassroots.

“There is real enthusiasm from citizens who are turning up in large numbers to engage with government officials during public consultation forums”, said Public Health PS Mark Bor as he unveiled health sector’s 2012/13 expenditure plans.

“However most of our projects being implemented through public participation are yet to get off the ground because communities can’t agree on where to locate the facilities.”

These concerns have also emerged from top government officials since they started engaging citizens late last year.

“As ministry in charge of implementing devolution, we have been witnessing a disturbing return of partisan politics that could undermine government’s quest to decentralise resources”, says Local Government minister Musalia Mudavadi.

He was alluding to ensuing clan and ethnic politics that have clouded public submissions after the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission unveiled a preliminary report on additional constituencies and wards for public review.

The competing interests are obvious. Apart from extra political posts, an additional constituency implies increased disbursement of development capital through vehicles such as Constituency Development Fund, which the executive is keen to retain after elections.
“Politicians must provide leadership and guide dispassionate debate,” said Mr Mudavadi who also chairs Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation team (commonly referred to as Serena Process).

Dispute over what was perceived as arbitrary creation of electoral boundaries has been cited among the roots of tension that fuelled post-election violence.

Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta — who like Mr Mudavadi is a deputy prime minister — made similar comments when he launched public hearings on 2012/13 budgetary proposals on Tuesday.

“Negative ethnicity is emerging as a serious setback to government’s plan to devolve resources,” Mr Kenyatta said, citing entrenched culture that traditionally ethnicises competition for national resources.

While the Constitution guarantees 15 per cent of national budget as direct disbursement to county governments, citizens have an opportunity to use public hearings to lobby for additional funding and even influence the choice of priority projects for their regions.

On the ground, however, ethnic politics is holding back efforts to exploit coal deposits in parts of Eastern Province even as the country looks for ways of bridging its huge national energy shortfall, Mr Kenyatta said.

Similarly, inefficiency at the port of Mombasa — an umbilical cord for the entire region — cannot be addressed effectively since the choice of corrective measures ought to be sensitive to ethnic considerations of the local communities.

“Decentralisation is premised on a foundation that people at the grassroots are free to decide how their resources are managed but this does not imply petty politics and negative ethnicity,” Mr Kenyatta said.
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