How to distribute constituencies under new constitution

 By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

29 August 2010

By the time you read this, the New Constitution of Kenya will be in force. One of the issues that will change very soon under the new law is the distribution of electoral constituencies. I have written about this issue in a previous article (October 2009) where I showed how the boundaries can be draw taking into account the physical size and the population in various regions.

The New Constitution says that there shall be 290 constituencies and the number of inhabitants shall be, “as nearly as possible, equal to the population quota”. This means that the mapping will begin from the current national population of about 36 million.

Dividing this by 290 gives a population quota of 124,138. The Constitution goes on to say that “The number of inhabitants of a constituency or ward may be greater or lesser than the population quota by a margin of not more than (a) 40 per cent for cities and sparsely populated areas; and (b) 30 per cent for the other areas.”

The question that arises immediately is: how do we decide how many constituencies to allocate a region like, say Nairobi (population, 3.24 million), or Mandera (337,000 inhabitants)?

If we go by the population quota, Nairobi would get 26 constituencies, but that would leave very little to be shared by the rest of the country. Thus we might want to reduce the number without breaking the law.

To do that, we first find the largest population allowed per constituency. This is 124,138 plus 40 per cent. The answer is 173,793; therefore, the MINIMUM number of constituencies will be the current population (3.24 million) divided by 173,793. That is, 19.

In the case of Mandera, the population quota would give the area only two constituencies. However, this number can be increased in order to reduce the average size per constituency.

This is done by first finding the smallest population allowed by the Constitution. This is 124,138 minus 40 per cent, which comes to 74,483. With this number per constituency, we can get up to 4 electoral units in this region of the country.

Would this be a fair distribution? Giving, say 26 constituencies to Nairobi and 4 to Mandera makes a total of 30. This is about 10 per cent of the total number allowed by the constitution. It also turns out that the combined population of these two areas (3.58 million) is also about 10 per cent of the national total. Thus it looks fair.

Nevertheless, as I explained in this column in October last year, I don’t think limiting the number of constituencies in the country is a good idea. I think we should have decide on the maximum population and worked backwards from there.