As you might imagine, this is an honour the clan bestows only on a few, but one that requires sobriety, focus and a keen eye for fair arbitration. Most importantly, the clan wouldn’t countenance an elder walking away from a challenging matter before him or opting for silence when wisdom calls that he gives an unequivocal position.
In an era gone by, the clan elder would have been called upon to rule on cases that led to capital punishment. Thank God for modern law, because our communities transferred most of these heavy decisions to the city of many lights, Nairobi.
The same way we surrendered the role of law-making to the many people we elect every five years, in the form of MPs and senators, and whom we pay premium salaries to be the guardians of democracy and governance. As with the clan responsibilities, their mandate does not come with the option of loud silence when issues of national interest come before them.
On Thursday, April 20, 2023, the Division of Revenue Bill, in which the Senate was to determine the fate of an amendment granting counties Sh407 billion, up from Sh385 billion in the new financial year, came up for voting on the floor of the Senate.
Twenty-two senators allied to Kenya Kwanza voted against the amendment. Nine Azimio-leaning ones voted in a failed attempt to pass it. What stood out for me was that 16 elected senators went missing at the crucial vote. Obviously, the role of the Senate in devolution, and their own loss of relevance in the absence of devolved units, totally escaped their minds.
On Wednesday this week, after weeks of controversy over the Finance Bill, 2023, it finally came up for the second reading in the National Assembly. The preceding weeks had seen noisy debate across the country over the pros and cons of the proposals in the Bill.
In that period, every MP must have known how high the stakes were for the general population, regarding the contentious issues in the Bill. There was no excuse whatsoever – perhaps with the exception of those serving suspensions or those admitted to hospital, if any – for any MP to miss the vote. Yet a whopping 92 MPs skipped that vote.
Parliamentarians may not know this, but the public perception of the National Assembly is that it is one of the institutions that cost too much to maintain. There are 290 elected MPs, 47 woman representatives and 12 nominated MPs.
The ordinary Kenyan sees the House simply as made up of these folks who earn too much, fight for salary raises every now and then, have huge car grants and enjoy the luxury of presiding over a multimillion-shilling Constituency Development Fund. Regardless of the veracity of this perception, the least the voter expects from his or her elected representative is a decision on issues on the floor of the House.
I am tempted to add that the voter also expects a certain quality of debate, but given the calibre of folks voters have been sending to the House lately, I hold back on that. Parliament used to be the theatre of firebrands and revolutionaries in the mould of James Orengo, George Anyona, Lawrence Sifuna, Koigi Wamwere, Mwashengu wa Mwachofi and their peers.
But it is today largely a melting pot of cantankerous politics bereft of ideology. Watching the debate preceding the vote on the Finance Bill was at times painful. Those especially on the government side repeated rehearsed lines, gave “shallow” a new meaning and seemed to want, more than anything else, some benefactor to see their performance on live TV.
However, the biggest thumbs down must go to the members who skipped the vote. When they take the oath of office and accept the mandate of the people, the basic expectation is that they will not run away, like cowardly dogs, tails coiled between their legs, from crucial parliamentary decisions.
They obviously know by now that the public doesn’t buy the narrative that MPs, especially opposition ones, could disappear from the House in such large numbers, without a certain amount of “help”. In the fullness of time, I am sure many will be made accountable to the people the next time the ballot comes.
In the general scheme of things, the Azimio MPs who voted YES and the Kenya Kwanza ones who voted NO at least took a stand and didn’t duck responsibility. The jury is out on whether their stands echoed the voices of their electors, or if they are prepared for the consequences from their political parties.
But as with every such event, a few people stood out. I must mention Githunguri MP Gathoni wa Muchomba, who looked straight into the eyes of the regime and declared that she wouldn’t play ball. Ahead of the vote, wa Muchomba had been at the grassroots, meeting her people and seeking their views. The consensus from them was to reject the Bill, which she duly did. It was some brave performance.
The second standout performance had to be that of Kathiani MP and deputy minority leader, Robert Mbui. The Azimio side is caught up in the unenviable position where their Whip and Deputy Whip (who now serves the majority’s interests) are missing in action, and Mbui brilliantly rose to the occasion to cover for them. Still only 54, the Wiper legislator clearly has a bright future in politics with that powerful and flawless showing.
I am reminded of a story from the early 90s, after the first multiparty elections of 1992. The ruling party Kanu set out to buy several opposition MPs to defect, many of them from Ford Asili, especially from the then larger Kakamega. They included Javan Omani, Apili Wawire, Japheth Shamallah, Benjamin Magwaga and Nicodemus Khaniri.
There were of course others from elsewhere, like Nyanza’s Protus Momanyi, Tom Obondo and Charles Owino, but Western was the real floodgate of defections. The running joke during these defections was that the weak among the legislators were bought to cross the floor and occasion by-elections, while the strong were paid to maintain a studious silence in the House. It was a combined and effective tool of control by the powers that be.
I do not know if the Kenya Kwanza regime “helped” opposition MPs miss the vote on the Finance Bill, 2023. I am quite certain that the court of public opinion will prosecute that better than me.
But one thing I know is that an MP who, having taken the oath to represent his or her people, encounters a decision on the floor that is at variance with the wishes of the voters and chooses the convenient path of escape rather than taking a vote, has lost the moral authority to carry that title and ought to resign to let a braver person carry that mandate.
And this applies both to elected MPs and the nominated ones who go to the House to serve special and/or political party interests. It is immoral to have your cake and eat it, in a country where cake is a luxury to begin with.
