•As women, we support devolution and demand that 45 percent of the money should come to the counties Nairobi county assembly speaker,Beatrice Elachi has said.
•This was part of the recommendation by women leaders presented by Elachi during the Building Bridges Initiative forum in Kitui on Saturday.
Image: COURTESY
Women leaders are now demanding the full implementation of the two-thirds gender rule.
In the recommendations read by Nairobi County Assembly speaker Beatrice Elachi, the legislators drawn from all political divides said implementation of the rule will be key to realising the 50-50 principal.
The recommendations were read on Saturday during the fourth BBI consultative forum in Kitui County.
The politicians including Maendeleo ya Wanawake organisation and other women representatives said they will only support the BBI if it will relook at the rule which was failed in parliament.
In April 2016, MPs failed to pass a crucial bill to effect the two-thirds gender rule, despite a passionate appeal from President Uhuru Kenyatta.
“I call upon all our members to vote for this bill. We need to pass this bill into law to comply with the constitutional provisions on the composition of elective offices in Kenya. The people of Kenya are waiting to see you make history this afternoon,” Uhuru said in a statement ahead of the voting.
But the lawmakers failed to make history and did not enact the enabling legislation to ensure equitable gender representation in Parliament.
In a day of haggling and intense lobbying by women MPs preceded by a dinner hosted in honor of their men counterparts to appease them to pass the bill, only 195 MPs voted in its support, despite 242 members being present.
Women MPs under their KEWOPA caucus had hosted the men in a special dinner at Hotel Intercontinental to lobby for their support.
But when voting time came yesterday, 28 MPs voted against the bill while 92 abstained.
The bill stipulates that one cannot be nominated for a special seat for more than two terms.
It says the provision for the special seats will lapse 20 years after the 2017 elections.
The constitution does not stipulate the formula through which the two-thirds principle should be achieved.
It leaves it to the state to put in place a law for the purpose.
But the women politicians said going forward the bill seeking to enact the rule must be revisited and re-introduced in the house.
The women further demanded the adaption and application of the opposite gender rule by all arms of the national and county government.
Further, the recommendation proposes that divisive elections through mixed-member proportional representation in the political parties are good and progressive in the quest for gender equality.
The recommendations come even as the house seems to have changed tact in ensuring women get more political seats in the 2022 election.
In a new proposal that could compel political parties to nominate more women before elections, Legislators want the law amended to require political parties to ensure that at least a third of its candidates for parliamentary and county assembly elections are of either gender.
The amendments spearheaded by the National Assembly’s Constitutional Implementation and Oversight Committee (CIOC) will also make it mandatory that at least five per cent of the nominees are persons with disabilities.
As a deterrent measure, the proposed law bars IEBC from accepting lists of candidates from political parties that do not meet the gender rule.
“The commission shall not accept the list of candidates nominated by a political party unless it is satisfied the political party has complied,” the bill states in part.