Initially, we used to have the budget made by the Executive.
Those of us who were privileged to be at the Bomas of Kenya constitution-making process thought that shifting the budget-making process to the representative of the people was right.
It was hoped that through this route, more resources would be channeled towards development.
On the contrary, what we are increasingly seeing is a situation where Parliament amasses a lot of the government budget to itself, and even continues to blackmail other arms of government, especially the Executive, when some of their interests are not met.
I think it is completely unacceptable.
It is a complete subversion of the original intention and the quest to ensure that Parliament becomes the true representative of the people.
Apparently, and unfortunately, Parliament has become a representative of itself as opposed to the many people that elect it.
We are increasingly seeing a trend where even parliamentary staff are paid much better than employees in the public service.
There is a lot of corruption when it comes to recruitment. We have had cases of abuse and claims of impropriety by members of the Public Service Commission, most of them Members of Parliament.
So, this is something that requires revisiting so that we do not curtail the budget of the Judiciary.
In the past, High Court judges were limited to Nairobi. There were no resident judges.
Today, the High Court is in more than half of the counties.
The Judiciary has grown over the years, but Parliament seems not to have sufficiently appreciated that fact and continues to amass a lot of cash.
It is something that requires public debate. It requires advocacy and political will from other arms of the government and the citizenry as well as the human rights defenders.
We don’t want to have Parliament continue with its authoritarianism. It is the Constitution that is supreme.
If, indeed, Kenya was a parliamentary system, we could be talking about parliamentary supremacy.
But in this case, we are talking about the supreme Constitution.
Human rights defender spoke to the Star
