DEVELOPING STORY: From our previous article aired on 30th, 2026.
On July 30, President William Ruto stood before the nation from State House and called Kenyans into what he described as the most consequential national conversation since the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution. He was unveiling Vision 2060, the successor to the ageing Vision 2030 blueprint, and inviting political parties, county governments, universities, business leaders, faith organisations, civil society and young people to a national convention on August 12 to shape a development charter meant to outlive any single administration.
The language was deliberately constitutional. The President framed the new vision as flowing from Article-level obligations, telling Kenyans that public participation sits at the very heart of governance and that shaping the country's next long-term plan through an inclusive, transparent, people-driven process is not merely his preference but his constitutional duty. He spoke of a development charter anchored in the Constitution rather than in the agenda of any single administration, promising to translate constitutional guarantees on health, housing, food, water and education into measurable outcomes over the next generation.
It is a fine speech. It is also, for many Kenyans watching from Ol Kalou, from the streets during the Gen Z anniversary protests, or from the courtrooms hearing contempt applications over Laikipia, a difficult one to reconcile with lived experience. Even Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka, speaking at a church service in Embu the same weekend, pushed back directly: his argument was that the country's priority ought to be full implementation of the 2010 Constitution and delivery of the existing Vision 2030 promises, not the unveiling of a new blueprint. If the Constitution is truly the anchor the President claims it to be, the question worth asking is simple — anchored where, and enforced by whom?
The Constitution as launchpad, not leash
This is the uncomfortable pattern that recurs in Kenyan public life: the Constitution is invoked reverently when it is useful for legitimising a new government initiative, a new blueprint, a new "national conversation." It becomes noticeably less central when it is the thing standing between state actors and the exercise of raw power. A blog reader in Nairobi or Nakuru does not need to be a constitutional lawyer to notice the gap between the rhetoric of Article 10 values — participation, accountability, the rule of law — and the reality on the ground over the past several months.
Ol Kalou, July 16, 2026. The by-election billed as a proxy contest between the Ruto and Gachagua camps produced exactly the scenes that Chapter Six and the Elections Act were written to prevent: allegations of voter bribery, the appearance of armed men in civilian clothing moving through polling areas, and violence that left the credibility of the process in question. An election is supposed to be the clearest expression of constitutional sovereignty resting with the people. Instead, it became a stage for the kind of intimidation the Constitution explicitly outlaws.
Sabasaba and the June 25 commemorations. Kenyans marking the anniversary of the 2025 Gen Z uprising, and those who came out for the annual Saba Saba demonstrations, were met with heavy police deployment, road closures, and, in multiple documented instances, excessive force against unarmed protesters. Article 37 of the Constitution guarantees every Kenyan the right to picket and to present petitions peaceably. Instead of facilitation, the state's default posture has repeatedly been suppression — batons, tear gas, and in some cases live rounds, deployed against citizens exercising a right the same government swears fidelity to when it is politically convenient.
Hooded men and unmarked vehicles. Perhaps nothing captures the double standard more starkly than the persistence of plainclothes, masked operatives moving in unmarked vehicles to intimidate, abduct or disappear government critics — a pattern human rights organisations have documented for months. Conservatory court orders explicitly barring police officers from disguising their identity and from operating unmarked vehicles during such operations exist on record. They have been defied. An order from the bench, grounded in the same Constitution the President invokes for Vision 2060, has simply been ignored by the very security apparatus that answers to the executive.
Extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. The killing of Cecil Ouma inside a Principal Secretary's official vehicle, and the continuing accountability gap around those responsible, sits alongside a longer list of unresolved disappearances linked to state security operatives. Article 26 guarantees the right to life; Article 29 guarantees freedom from torture and inhuman treatment. Neither has translated into consistent prosecutions or institutional consequence.
Laikipia and the contempt of court. Few episodes illustrate executive disregard for judicial authority as plainly as the Laikipia Ebola quarantine facility saga. The High Court issued conservatory orders in May and June 2026 halting construction at the US-backed facility on Laikipia Air Base pending review. Construction continued anyway. Justice Patricia Nyaundi found that the government had deliberately violated existing conservatory orders, and Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale was summoned to explain the defiance before eventually announcing a halt to work after being found in contempt. Article 160 guarantees the independence of the judiciary, and Article 2(4) declares any act inconsistent with the Constitution invalid. Yet compliance came only after a contempt finding forced the government's hand — not from voluntary deference to the rule of law.
So which Constitution is it?
None of this suggests the Vision 2060 project is inherently dishonest, or that long-term national planning is a bad idea. Kenya does need a framework beyond Vision 2030. But there is something jarring about a government that reaches for the Constitution's most aspirational language — public participation, national consensus, development imperatives — while treating its more inconvenient provisions, the ones about assembly, due process, judicial authority and the sanctity of life, as negotiable.
A constitution cannot be a ceremonial document that gets dusted off for launches and speeches, and set aside when police officers need to move without identification, when courts issue orders that inconvenience a US-backed facility, or when citizens gather to exercise their right to protest. Either the 2010 Constitution is the supreme law binding every organ of the state at all times, as Article 2 says it is, or it is a convenient rhetorical device deployed selectively depending on what the executive wants to accomplish that week.
Kenyans invited to imagine the country of 2060 might reasonably ask a more immediate question first: can the state be trusted to obey the Constitution of 2010? Vision without accountability is not a national conversation — it is a monologue dressed up as one.
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