Constituencies can be determined by both size and population
By MUNGAI KIHANYA
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
01 November 2009
The question of constituency boundaries is threatening to split the
country down the middle…along the straight line running from Lokichogio
to Malindi! On the eastern side there are politicians arguing that their
people are under-represented in parliament and on the west, there are
others also claiming that their people are under-represented.
Their reasons are, however, different. Those from the east say they need
more constituencies because the present ones are too large and those
from the west are asking for more because the current ones have too many
people.
These two arguments are valid. If you live on the eastern side of the
dividing line and wanted to see your MP, the journey to the local
constituency office can easily take you five days – it is far away and
roads don’t exist. On the hand, if you are from the west, the journey
will take you a few hours, but when you get there, you will find so many
other people seeking assistance and you can easily queue for five days
before being seen.
The bottom line, therefore, is that the people of
I wrote on this matter in September 2007and suggested that the
distribution of constituencies should be based on both the population
and the surface area of the country. I proposed that we should limit the
population (not the number of voters) in a constituency to a maximum of
100,000 inhabitants.
I further suggested that, we divide the national population by 100,000,
to get the total number of constituencies in the country. Thus; 39
million divided by 100,000, equals 390 constituencies.
In order to take account of the surface area, I proposed that we divide
the country’s area [580,000 square kilometres] by the number of
constituencies [390] and multiply the result [1,500sq.km] by two to get
the maximum limit for the constituency size [3,000sq.km].
Now; I would like to demonstrate how the idea would work by using two
Provinces from the “warring” regions – Central and North Eastern.
The population of Central currently stands at about 4.8 million. With
that number and the limit of 100,000 inhabitants, this Province should
be divided into 48 constituencies.
With a total area of about 14,000sq.km, 48 constituencies would each
cover about 292sq.km. This is well within the allowed maximum size of
3,000sq.km.
North Eastern has about 1.25 million people and using the same
population limit, this region should have 13 constituencies. This is
only two more than the current number. However, since the total area of
this Province is 127,000sq.km, the average area per constituency would
come to over 13,000sq.km – four times the 3,000sq.km limit.
Therefore, for this region, population would not be a good way of
determining the number of constituencies. However, using the 3,000sq.km
limit, it turns out that this Province should be divided into at least
32 constituencies. These would have an average of just under 40,000
people each, which is within the 100,000 limit.
I am surprised that
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