Sabotage and the Kenyan constitution
To provide Kenyans with a fair constitution, a panel of experts used 47,793 words. To derail it, someone secretly added two. The attempted sabotage occurred at the official government printer, which was producing copies of the proposed constitution ahead of a national vote on the law in August. The document had been praised for guaranteeing basic freedoms. But in a move that has caused public outrage and prompted an inquiry involving the attorney general and intelligence chiefs, someone at the printing plant was able to add the words “national security” to a key clause on fundamental rights. Nearly 2,000 copies of the altered constitution had been published by the time it was discovered. “It was an outrageous act, unbelievable,” said Otiende Amolo, a Kenyan member of the committee that drafted the new laws. “The addition of those words meant that all rights could be abrogated in favour of whatever was deemed ‘national security’.” Though President Mwai Kibaki has ordered a police investigation, the saboteur, widely assumed to be an individual or group opposed to the proposed constitution, has yet to be publicly identified.
- Xan Rice, The Guardian Weekly