Many countries in the world have constitutions based on the models of the great imperial powers of Europe. It makes sense that former colonies would model themselves on Great Britain or France, for example, and shape their systems of government to mirror the ideal of parliamentary democracy. Rarer are the countries that have modeled themselves on the U.S. system of checks and balances. Even though Kenya was never a colony or protectorate of the U.S. it now has a new constitution explicitly based on the U.S. model. As the Associated Press reports:
Kenya’s president signed a new constitution into law Friday that institutes a U.S.-style system of checks and balances and has been hailed as the most significant political event since Kenya’s independence nearly a half century ago. Kenya’s new constitution is part of a reform package that President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga committed themselves to after signing a power-sharing deal in February 2008. That deal ended violence that killed more than 1,000 people following Kenya’s disputed December 2007 presidential vote. […] The government and parliament now must implement the ambitious document, a process expected to take up to five years. The document requires, among other things, the formation of a Supreme Court and a Senate.
As Kenya moves forward to end decades of political and ethnic unrest, it’s encouraging to see that the U.S. Constitution has not lost the ability to inspire. Let me leave you with this video report from the Reuters news service on the celebrations in Kenya:
