Nominated Senator Naomi Shiyonga has accused male politicians of plotting to shrink the democratic space for women by seeking to scrap their positions.
Speaking in Malava on Saturday, Shiyonga said those calling for the scrapping of women representative seats and those of nominated MCAs were men who fear women in leadership positions. She called them enemies of constitutionalism.
The ODM lawmaker said the positions of Woman Representative and those of nominations were part of mechanisms to achieve the two-thirds gender rule as required in the Constitution.
“Parliament has failed to give women their rightful share yet some leaders are still obsessed with calls to scrap the positions that help achieve some balance. They should be proposing how Kenya should achieve gender parity instead,” Shiyonga said.
She was reacting to proposals by Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria that the positions of Woman Representative and nominated MCA be scrapped because of overrepresentation.
Kuria on Friday told the Building Bridges Initiatives task force that the seats serve no purpose and ought to be done away with. The team was collecting views from wananchi at the Kiambu Institute of Science and Technology.
“I'm an elected MP yet I hear there are four nominated MCAs in my constituency. I only know one of them. If I do not know them, you do not expect the common mwananchi to know the nominated MCAs yet there is an elected person to represent the people. We need to scrap the nominated seats and also those of Woman Representative,” Kuria told the team headed by Garissa Senator Yusuf Haji.
The Thirdway Alliance led by Ekuru Aukot has also been calling for the scrapping of the positions to reduce to wage bill.
Kuria said the positions were a duplication of roles played by elected leaders.
On Saturday, Shiyonga said that women have the numbers and will resist any attempt to take away what they already have.
She said that though some of the women representatives may not be performing, it was not a reason to scrap the seats.
She said reducing the number representative positions cannot resolve the wage bill problem and instead urged the government to cut wastage to raise money for development.
Shiyonga said men should not fear women in leadership but should help them because they are more development conscious.
edited by peter obuya
