APRM • SECOND COUNTRY REVIEW REPORT OF THE REPUBLIC OF KENYA 104. Increasingly, the more complex system of separation of powers has led to interdependence that, while generating tension over its lack of rigid clarity, does provide the required system of checks and balances for democratic governance. This has ensured that democratic space has expanded through the evolving framework that has given the various institutions the ability to hold each other into account with ability to bite if necessary, despite the overarching influence of party loyalties. Yet another complicating factor is public expectation that parliamentarians would also be able to perform executive functions that would bring infrastructure and other benefits to their constituencies. This is often a factor making for cordial relations at the personal level between Members of Parliament and Ministerial Heads of Government Departments. 105. Consultations at county level across the country show that the relationship between County Governors and Members of Constituent Assemblies is not always cordial, since County governors occasionally become the target of impeachment threats from Assembly Members eager to benefit from the perks of office. Public perception of members of the legislature at the national level also cast them as being often driven by selfish considerations of individual comfort in some of their decisions. Corruption allegations also do trail members of the executive and the judiciary, further complicating the working of the system of separation of powers and the attendant checks and balances among these branches of government. In this regard, capacity of members of the legislature is a major challenge, especially at county government level. 3.4.2.1 Challenges 106. Challenges relate to unbridled supremacy contests among the contending power centres, lack of full appreciation and strategic endorsement of the benefits of separation of powers and checks and balances among key stakeholders, developments that could make reconcentration of powers temporarily attractive to segments of Kenya’s top political leadership, growing inequalities in capacity among the various branches of government, decline in the culture of civility and restraint, as well as corruption, ineffective civic education and general lack of effective pressure from below in support of holding the various power centres in check. Opportunities abound in the sheer success of the current arrangements in jurisdictional partitioning, and in seeking further clarifications of boundaries. 3.4.3 Recommendations of the Panel 107. The Panel makes the following recommendations: i) Building capacity on the operation and management of systems of separation of powers in modern democratic contexts (The Executive, Legislature and Judiciary at national and county levels as appropriate). | 85 |