Largely in response to the violence that engulfed much of the country in the wake of its hotly contested and vigorously disputed December, 2007 elections Kenya has drafted a new constitution and presented the draft to the public. (You can download a copy here. Hat tip.)

Kenya’s Ambassador to the United States, H.E. Peter Ogego issued a statement regarding the new constitution:

“On Tuesday, Kenya’s Committee of Experts, the body charged with steering Kenya’s constitutional review, released a draft of the new Kenyan Constitution. This represents a major landmark on Kenya’s path of political and constitutional reform, a process that was initiated after the 2007 election violence.
The new constitution is based on ten cardinal principles that will pave the way for a united and more democratic Kenya. Among these principles are: sharing of executive power among the president and prime minister, a decentralized government with constraints on executive power, a new two chamber parliament and a Supreme Court.
The Committee of Experts also proposes changes to the electoral process to avoid election disputes in the future.
President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga are grateful to the Committee of Experts for their hard work. The release of this Constitution marks a new beginning for Kenya and an important opportunity for all Kenyans to participate in transforming their country in a democratic and transparent manner. There now follows a period of public consultation on the document with the final draft to be voted on by the Kenyan people in a referendum there after.”

This process strikes me as one that falls into the category of necessary but not sufficient if the goal is to emerge from the 2007 fiasco with a stronger sense of national cohesion. For whatever the constitution, the underlying causes of violence still exist, including the tendency of politicians to manipulate so-called ethnic issues when it suits them to do so.