Constitution of Kenya (1963)

[1] The Constitution also provided for a bicameral parliament, the National Assembly, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

[4] The KANU and KADU had continual disagreements over the course of the first two conferences which prevented any true progress from being made.

[1] Both the Kenyan delegation and British government brought demands to the table which were not agreed on and so this conference ended with no formal decisions made.

[6] As the Independence Constitution was based on the Westminster system, it followed the basic structure of having a legislative, executive, and judiciary branch.

[9] The idea of citizenship was a complicated issue because at the time of their independence, there were many different immigrant communities living in Kenya.

[13] Minority groups in Kenya were able to petition for provisions to be added to the constitution in order to preserve some of their power.

[14] From the start of the Independence Conferences in 1960, Kenyans were averse to the idea of basing their constitution on the Westminster model.

[5] It was clear that although this was named the Independence Constitution, the British still had a high level of control over their former colony.

[5] Additionally, while the interests of the KANU and KADU can be seen throughout the Independence Constitution, the concerns of minority tribes and people throughout Kenya were rarely considered.

Their lack of support toward upholding the constitution as a whole served to weaken it as the KANU worked to strip power from that section.

[12] This coincided with the establishment of a de facto one-party state after the main opposition party was simultaneously banned,[19] leading to the Kenya African National Union establishing complete dominance of the Kenyan state until opposition parties were once again legalized in 1991.