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Kenya

Ligale in last bid to legalise constituencies

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 27 – The interim Independent Boundary Review Commission has made a last-minute spirited attempt to correct anomalies that were pointed out by the High Court, by releasing a detailed list of constituencies just hours to the expiry of its mandate. 

The new report contains details of the names of units, specific boundaries and the population quota in an apparent compliance with the constitution and Friday\’s court ruling.

IIBRC chairman Andrew Ligale however said the actual details of where the boundaries would be released to the public once three cases barring the gazettement of the new boundaries were determined.

"What we have now done is to delimit boundaries specifying where they are for each constituency. We have not changed anything from our initial report," he said.

Mr Ligale blamed the storm that had been generated by the new units to misunderstanding and previous injustices committed on the areas he is now accusing of favouring.

"If you look at the population of Central and Western it is almost equal and if you look at the proposed delimitations they will now have 34 and 33 constituencies respectively. However western receives nine constituencies while Central gets five since the latter had more constituencies, some of which don\’t meet the population criteria," he said.

"Comparing Nyanza and Eastern, they have almost the same population total of 5.4 million and 5.6 million respectively and they will have 44 and 42 constituencies respectively. However Nyanza will get 10 new constituencies while Eastern will receive eight since the former was previously disadvantaged."

According to the commission\’s proposals, Nairobi with a population of 3.1 million people will get nine additional units making a total of 17 constituencies while Coast with a population of 3.3 will get five more to make 26.

North-Eastern has been allocated seven more constituencies adding to the current seven to cater for its population of 2.3 million people. Rift Valley province gets the lion share with an additional 27 units to make a total of 77 constituencies.

This announcement came as the mandate of the IIBRC expired on Saturday and came hot on the heels of a High Court ruling on Friday that barred the team from gazetting the 80 new Constituencies.

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In his ruling Justice Daniel Musinga dismissed the work of the commission saying it failed to adhere to the law when deciding the new units which required it to carry out extensive consultations.

The proposed new units have divided politicians and have been blamed for Thursday\’s impasse that led to the delayed parliamentary approval of nominees to the Commission for the Implementation of the constitution and that of revenue allocation.

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