Have MPs got nothing better to debate?

Kenya: After a two-week recess, Parliament resumed yesterday and got down to the business of legislation. Before Parliament is a motion by legislator Adan Keynan, dubbed the Order of Precedence Bill. The provisions of this Bill seek to strip governors of the trappings of power associated with high office and criminalise addressing governors as “His Excellency”, and Members of County Assemblies as “honourable” members. The Bill further proposes that transgressors should be fined Sh2 million or sentenced to a jail term not exceeding one year.

At the same time, before the Senate is a Bill seeking to place Members of County Assemblies on the same pedestal with MPs. Members of Parliament are not averse to being addressed as “honourable.” We live in interesting times indeed.

Why the contradiction? Why, you may ask, this obsession with power and titles? After all, veneration is an individual freedom that will be infringed upon if an endearment can land one in trouble. Legislating on titles and the pecking order in leadership belongs to the past. In the new scheme of things, power has been dispersed to various centres and the governor is one of those.

The MPs are being annoyingly obtuse. More pertinent issues like land, pollution, power generation, unemployment, heavy taxation, health, water, insecurity, loss of lives on the roads and poor education standards have been consigned to the back burners or ignored by the same MPs.

It is not lost on many that the MPs have wished to exert their revenge on the governors for what they perceived to be the latter’s love for power and influence and their diminished patronage in the constituencies. The feeling in their ranks is that governors have taken away the carrot.

That should not be the case because all must work for the common good of the people.