Sing’Oei: Sifuna and the fraud of half a Constitution

Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing’Oei/COURTESYI have been listening to Senator Edwin Sifuna’s rhetoric quite keenly because he seeks high office.

He clearly wants to be remembered as the saviour of the Constitution. What he is actually offering is its mutilation.

Listen to him closely. His entire politics now rests on a single, seductive claim: “My singular focus is the restoration of constitutional order.”

It sounds principled. It is not. It is a clever evasion, and a dangerous bifurcation.

Because in Sifuna’s constitutional order, some Kenyans matter more than others. Some rights are sacred. Others are jokes.

When he defends Article 33, 35 and 37-freedom of expression, media, assembly-he thunders. The cameras love it. Twitter loves it.

But when the state moves to implement Article 43- the right of every Kenyan to health, to decent housing, to reasonable standards of sanitation- Sifuna sneers.

Taifa Care is a “scam.” Affordable Housing is a “heist.” Infrastructure is “misplaced priorities.”

Let us call this what it is: Constitutional apartheid.

Sifuna has created a hierarchy of rights that does not exist in our Constitution, but exists deeply in his class politics.

Civil and political rights, the rights lawyers, politicians and elites enjoy in Nairobi, are worthy of protection.

Social and economic rights — the rights mama mboga, the boda rider, the slum dweller in Kibra desperately need — are undeserving of even commendation.

This is not constitutionalism. This is elitism dressed in constitutional robes.

The 2010 Constitution did not make this mistake.

The drafters, scarred by decades where political elites enjoyed freedom while the masses endured want, were explicit: Article 19 says the Bill of Rights is indivisible.

Article 20 says it applies to all. You cannot slice it like cake — taking the political icing and throwing away the social-economic bread.

Sifuna wants the Constitution without its revolution.

He wants the Constitution that allows him to hold a placard, but not the Constitution that requires the state to build a hospital where that placard is read.

He wants the Constitution that protects his press conference, but not the Constitution that demands a house with a toilet for the voter watching that press conference.

This is intellectually dishonest and politically convenient. It allows you to play defender of the people while opposing everything that would materially improve the people’s lives.

You get to shout about abductions — rightly — but stay silent, or worse, mock, when the state tries to ensure that a Boda Boda youth rider would not die because he could not afford ICU.

And let us be honest about the politics: Why deride health, housing and infrastructure? Because if they succeed, the entire architecture of opposition built on grievance collapses.

If Taifa Care works, if a house help or a construction worker like Abigail in Eldoret can own a house, if tarmac reaches Mandera — what do you tell the people? That you protected their right to protest their poverty, but opposed their right to escape it?

President Ruto may be faulted by some — and may be challenged on any infringements on civil liberties — but on this, history will vindicate him: he is the first President to take Article 43 seriously as a political project, not a footnote.

That a child of the hustler nation would attempt to implement the social-economic chapter that the sons of privilege only quote in court.

Sifuna’s philosophy is therefore not just flawed, it is cruel. It tells a poor Kenyan: I will fight for your right to shout about your hunger, but I will fight against the program that tries to feed you.

Reminds me of when in 2004, as a young lawyer seeking the vindication of indigenous rights, I sought the assistance of Maina Kiai, then Kenya Human Rights Commission chief, who told me plainly that such rights were outside the remit of his Commission.

Kenyans are not stupid. They know the difference between a constitutionalist and a constitutional opportunist.

One builds both liberty and dignity. The other uses liberty to deny dignity.

The Constitution we adopted in 2010 was not half a Constitution. It was whole. It promised freedom from both tyranny and want.

Until Sifuna respects both, his claim to be its restorer remains what it is, a performance.

Dr Korir Sing’Oei is the Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary.