ABSTRACT
This chapter probes the paradoxes of the success of the Ufungamano Initiative, which forced an autocratic and intolerant regime to open space for mass participation in constitution making through a merger. While this merger denotes the movement’s success, it nonetheless dissipated the Ufungamano Initiative’s energy and focus. As such, this is also a story of limits. The chapter argues that the merger fundamentally altered the trajectory of the radical constitutional reform project by creating a mirage of spaces for democratic citizen participation which, in effect, facilitated guard-dropping and co-optation. The net effect of this co-optation was the abortion of the popular will of the people of Kenya to secure a new constitution due to fractures that ultimately led to the defeat of the government-sponsored constitution in the 2005 referendum.
