the Indian community and one Arab to represent the Arab community.
It was not until October 1944 that Mr Eliud Mathu was nominated as the first African representative to LEGCO where he served continuously until 1957 when he lost in the first election of African Members to LEGCO. Hitherto, African interests in LEGCO were represented by their colonial spiritual guides, the European clergymen. In 1954, the nomination of
African representatives to the LEGCO was increased to six. Despite this increase, the Africans were unhappy that their LEGCO representatives were nominated by the Europeans and this led to the appointment of a commission of inquiry (the Coutts Commission) to look into ways in which Africans could elect their representatives. The recommendations of the commission led to an amendment to the Elections Ordinance to effect the election of eight African representatives from eight electoral areas, with the first elections taking place in March 1957.
Milestones in constitution reform
Constitutional changes began in 1954 with the introduction of the Lyttelton constitution to replace the 1922 constitution. The Lyttelton constitution introduced a Council of Ministers and increased the nomination of African representatives to six. Following the results of the first election of African Members, none accepted office in government and in order to resolve the deadlock, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Rt Hon. Alan Lennox-Boyd came to Nairobi and outlined constitutional changes. The Lennox-Boyd constitution was created which increased the African seats by six and made provisions for 12 specially elected Members to be chosen by LEGCO. Major changes to the Lennox-
Boyd constitution in the first Lancaster House constitutional conference in 1960 created the Macleod constitution in which the LEGCO seats were increased to 65, with 33 set aside for Africans. The second Lancaster conference held in 1962 created the following changes:
• A bicameral Legislature elected by common adult suffrage;
• A lower House (House of Representatives) with 117 Members from single-Member constituencies, and 12 Specially elected Members picked by the House of Representatives sitting as an electoral college;
• An upper House (Senate) comprised of one Member from each of the 41 districts – with special powers in respect to Bills to amend the constitution;
• A strong and effective central government, responsible to “the National Assembly”;
• Regional Assemblies in the seven regions to ensure maximum decentralization of powers of government, and
• Constitutional amendments requiring a majority of 75 per cent of each House.
A final constitutional review was
held in February 1963 at which an agreement was reached for the independence of Kenya which was effected on 1 June 1963. At the end of 1966, the two Houses were merged to form a unicameral House – the National Assembly. The 41 Senators were
accommodated into the National Assembly by the creation of an additional seat in each of the 41 administrative districts they had previously represented in the Senate. The 12 Specially Elected Members in the House of Representatives continued to serve in the same capacity. Kenyan parliamentary representation has gradually
4 | The Parliamentarian | 2010: Issue Three - Kenya
Above: Hon. J.M. Shikuku (left) and the first Kenyan President of the CPA, Hon. F.M.G. Mati, MP (right).
increased to the current 224 Members – 210 elected, 12 nominated and 2 ex-officio Members (the Speaker and the Attorney-General).
“...the history, failures and successes of Kenya are greatly intertwined with the calibre and profile of successive Parliaments since independence.”
Moving to multiparty politics and committees Since 1957, elections in Kenya have used the principal of universal
suffrage or "one person, one vote". The first session of the first Parliament of independent Kenya (1963-69) was a multiparty Parliament convened in 1963 with most pioneering Parliamentarians coming from the Kenya African National Union (KANU) and Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) parties.
Competitive elections slowly disappeared as various parties were persuaded to join KANU, leading to a de facto one-party state in 1969 with Mzee Jomo Kenyatta as the President and Head of State. This was further reaffirmed in a constitutional amendment in 1982 making Kenya a de jure single-party state. An amendment of the constitution in December 1991, however, restored multipartyism in Kenya. The first recorded select committee was formed in 1907 when one of the first Bills of LEGCO was committed to a committee of the Council.