By Kepher Otieno - Reporter
Kenya, 27 August 2026 - Sixteen years after Kenyans overwhelmingly endorsed the 2010 Constitution, the country has implemented much of its transformative constitutional architecture.
But the unfinished business is now entering territory that will test the political class more than the legal fraternity.
Rarieda MP Dr Otiende Amollo, one of the architects of the Constitution, estimates that Kenya has achieved 70 per cent of what the constitutional order set out to accomplish.
The remaining 30 per cent, he says, contains some of the most difficult questions about the country's future.
And at the centre of the debate is a fundamental question: Should Kenya remain presidential, move to a parliamentary system, or embrace a hybrid arrangement combining elements of both?
Amollo says the question can no longer be avoided.
A presidential system puts executive authority in an elected President who serves as both head of state and head of government. A parliamentary system places the Prime Minister at the centre of government, with the executive deriving its authority from Parliament and remaining dependent on parliamentary confidence.
A semi-presidential system combines the two. It has an elected President with substantial powers and a Prime Minister who heads government and is accountable to Parliament. France provides one of the best-known examples.
Kenya is constitutionally presidential. But its political evolution has repeatedly generated proposals for a hybrid model, including the creation of a Prime Minister's office and broader executive power-sharing.
It is this question that Amollo believes should form part of the next constitutional conversation.
But he warns against assuming that constitutional reform means discarding everything achieved since 2010.
“The question is not whether the Constitution has worked or not worked,”Amollo argues. The question is what has worked, what has not worked, and what do we need to do about it?”
For him, the constitutional project should now enter a phase of deliberate review.
“There are things which have worked and we must protect them. There are things which have not worked and we must amend them. There are things which perhaps should never have been there and we should abolish them,” he says.
One of the most urgent unfinished tasks is electoral boundary delimitation.
The Constitution requires periodic review of constituency and ward boundaries. But the last comprehensive delimitation was undertaken in 2012.
The next review should have been completed by March 2024.
Kenya is therefore already late.
For Amollo, the delay is not merely administrative.
“We are already late,” he says, arguing that the country cannot continue postponing a constitutional obligation with direct consequences for political representation.
Population has changed dramatically since 2012. Towns have expanded. New settlements have emerged. Some constituencies have grown rapidly while others have remained relatively static.
Yet the political map has largely remained frozen.
The gender question presents another conspicuous gap.
The Constitution's two-thirds gender principle remains unrealised.
Sixteen years after the promulgation of the Constitution, women have yet to secure the level of representation envisaged by the country's supreme law.
Amollo sees this as part of the broader implementation deficit.
“The Constitution gave us the framework. The problem has been implementation,” he says.
The same question hangs over the National Government Constituencies Development Fund.
The fund has become deeply embedded in constituency-level development, but its constitutional and legislative future remains contested.
For Amollo, the answer should not be predetermined.
“We need to revisit the laws and ask ourselves: what has worked? What has not worked? What should be amended and what should be abolished?” he says.
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Yet there are constitutional achievements that, in his view, should not be exposed to political bargaining.
Chief among them is devolution.
The creation of 47 counties fundamentally altered the distribution of political power and resources. It moved government closer to citizens and created new centres of decision-making outside Nairobi.
Amollo insists that such gains must be protected.
“Devolution is now entrenched in the Constitution. It cannot simply be wished away,” he says.
But protecting devolution does not mean refusing to interrogate its implementation.
Health and agriculture remain particularly contentious.
The Constitution divided functions between the national and county governments. But years of implementation have exposed grey areas, institutional duplication and disputes over resources and responsibility.
Amollo says Kenya must be prepared to ask whether particular functions are best handled nationally or at county level.
“We must look at health. We must look at agriculture. We must ask ourselves whether there are functions which need to be centralised and whether there are others which must remain devolved,” he says.
The challenge, however, is not necessarily the constitutional design.
It is how governments have implemented it.
That distinction matters because the Constitution has also introduced ideas that have fundamentally changed the relationship between citizens and the state.
One of them is public participation.
Amollo regards it as one of the important gains of the constitutional order.
“Public participation has put the people at the centre of decision-making,” he says. “It makes people feel that they are part and parcel of government.”
The principle has not been without shortcomings. Public participation has sometimes been reduced to formal meetings held after decisions have effectively been made.
But the constitutional idea remains transformative.
It recognises citizens not merely as voters who appear every five years, but as participants in governance.
That may ultimately prove one of the Constitution's most enduring legacies.
Sixteen years on, therefore, Amollo's 70 per cent assessment presents Kenya with an uncomfortable proposition.
The country has built much of the constitutional house.
The remaining task is to decide what needs repair, what needs strengthening and what needs rebuilding.
That will require more than another constitutional slogan.
It will require confronting the presidential-versus-parliamentary question, completing boundary delimitation, delivering the two-thirds gender principle, clarifying devolution, resolving implementation conflicts in health and agriculture and deciding the future of institutions such as NG-CDF.
“The time is ripe for us to look at the Constitution and the laws we have made under it,” Amollo says.
“We must be honest about what has worked, what has not worked, and make the necessary changes.”
The next chapter of Kenya's constitutional story, therefore, may not be about replacing the 2010 Constitution.
It may be about finally making it work as fully as its architects intended.