Powerful churches target Kenya's Constitution over abortion

“These people are playing with fire,” says Mwalimu Mati, director of the Mars Group Kenya, an anticorruption watchdog that has pushed for the new constitution. “They’re forgetting the benefits of the whole bill of rights, just because of one clause in the bill of rights. We Kenyans have short memories, we don’t remember that people were killed because of the terrible effects of the stalemate of the last election, and if there is another stalemate in a future election under this current Constitution, there will be bloodshed again.”

Mr. Mati rejects the idea that church leaders were ignored during the drafting of the Constitution. “Certain interest groups are trying to renegotiate ideas that they have already agreed to, but where maybe they didn’t get things the way they wanted them,” he says.

US government says goal is to prevent future violence

The US government has not specifically endorsed any particular section of the Kenyan draft Constitution, but it has vigorously argued that Kenyans must adopt a constitution that would prevent a return of the political violence that followed the Dec. 27, 2007, elections.

“The Government of the United States welcomes Parliament’s overwhelming approval of Kenya’s harmonized draft Constitution,” Michael Ranneberger, the US ambassador to Kenya, said last month, after Kenya’s parliament passed the draft. “The leaders of the coalition government have sent a clear and positive message to the Kenyan people that the implementation of a new constitution is critical to achieving political reform.”

The US government has spent nearly $1 million in helping Kenyans register to vote in the upcoming referendum on the Constitution, now scheduled for Aug. 5, 2010. It has also spent $500,000 printing copies of the draft Constitution to be handed out on street corners, for Kenyans to familiarize themselves with the document.

Abortion issue rallies local Christians

Yet local Christians say the provision for abortion, even in emergency circumstances, is antithetical to their beliefs. And they have received a kind of hallelujah chorus from likeminded conservative Christian groups in the US, including Rev. Pat Robertson’s group, the American Center for Law and Justice.

"It opens the door to abortion on demand, which is why Christian organizations who are pro-life are so opposed to that provision," Jordan Sekulow, international director for ACLJ, told the Associated Press in an interview earlier this year.

In Nairobi, and throughout the country, religious activists have started a leaflet campaign to winnow away support for the draft constitution. One letter, signed by senior Pentacostalist church leaders, says, “we shall not endorse a constitution that has grossly overlooked justice and concerns persistently raised but ignored by the review organs for the warning in the Bible is very clearly recorded in Exodus 21:2 – 'Do not follow the crowd in wrong doing. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd.' ”

Related:

• How Kenya came undone
• In Kenya, International Criminal Court to try six top Kenyans
• Kenya news coverage

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