| dc.description.abstract | Much has been written on political parties by Political Scientists.
The abundance of these works makes it appear as if this paper ~s a
duplicate of what has already been doneG But a second glance at our work
will reveal that this is not so. While other works deal with political
parties in the realm of Kenya's political development generally, ours is
an attempt to see political parties in the light of a multi-party system
as an institution of our constitutional theory. The aim of this paper is
to explore the history of the multi-party system in Kenya with a v~ew to
establishing its viability or non-viability in our constitutional
framework. ~
In embarking on this research we were intrigued by the status quo in
Kenya. We noticed that though the constitution allows for a multi-party
system, Kenya is today a one party stateo We therefore set out to see
why this is so or whether the multi-party system has outlived its
usefulness. We gauged the usefulness of each political party by the
services it has rendered to constitutionalism.
In this research we adopted the method of re-examining the published
material on political parties. These we blended with contemporary
unpublished material from Newspapers and our own observation. Therefore
the conclusions arrived at or errors made in so doing are ours alone • . We
had to forgo certain details. The om~ss~on was both deliberate and
necessary. This is because we are writing a constitutional law dissertation
and not a political sc~ence thesis. Secondly the faculty of law fixed
a word limit which we found difficult to abide with. This paper does not
therefore boast of being exhaustiveo Despite the shortcomings we feel
that it will excite interest in critics to do a more thorough research.
I am much indebted to my supervisor Mr. Farouk Muslim who guided me
when writing this papero Without his help, in giving editorial advice
and in lending me books, this paper would not be what it iso I am also
indebted to my brother Mr. Teresius Co Muchira who secured a secretary
to type this papero Much thanks to the secretary Mrso Margaret Munyao
who typed this dissertation. Without her help this paper couldn't have
been ready in time. Finally I acknowledge my indebtedness to my
comrades in this University who gave me useful ideas here and there | |
