Don tips leaders on their legislative role

By ALPHONSE SHIUNDU                       

Nairobi,KENYA; National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi herded over 250 MPs at a luxury resort in Kwale County for an induction. The lawmakers’ induction workshop came just a week before they return to the august House in Nairobi for the final leg in this year’s legislative calendar.

The Speaker ensured a university don Okoth Okombo attended the meeting to inform the lawmakers about the responsibility that comes with having the supreme authority to make laws, and what it means to be an oversight institution.

Nowadays, the public’s view of an MP and what an MP does in Parliament, is at an all-time low, especially, after the controversial push for a pay hike, just days after the inauguration of the 11th Parliament.

The Speaker and senior officials in the National Assembly believe that the House needs a makeover. They titled the brief for image-making session as Towards Enhanced Image of Parliament: The mechanisms for effective public engagement and influencing perceptions.

MPs said why they don’t like the people who elected them because most of them are always begging for money. They said voters were accosting them for handouts to pay funeral, medical, and even wedding bills. They complained that they are always the ‘guests of honour’ in events in constituencies.

The MPs were so irritated in the meeting that they proposed that harambees be banned.

“Let’s ban harambees. In the meantime, we should begin declining these invitations to be ‘guest of honour.’ Why is it that judges are not invited to these events? It should also be okay for an MP not to attend a harambee. The culture right now is that if you don’t attend harambees, you will not be re-elected. We must change that culture,” said Priscilla Nyokabi, the Nyeri County women representative.

Gladys Wanga of Homa Bay said, “We should pass this harambee law so that we free ourselves from this bondage.”

Seme MP James Nyikal, said while some of rich lawmakers could afford the philanthropy that comes with the job, the poor ones  found it difficult to survive.

The job of an MP, they argued, is limited to representation, oversight, and legislation. But one of the guests, Lord David Steel, told them the work of an MP was just “an over-glorified social worker”.

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MPs also blamed the media for not covering them — never mind that it’s their official who closed the media centre. They claimed most journalists had to be paid in order to agree  to write about their contributions in the House.

But Okombo turned the heat on them and reminded them that they should “look in the mirror”.

“It is our job to find out why the ugliness in the mirror” Prof Okombo told the lawmakers. “Kenyans get shocked when MPs call each other “thieves” in Parliament.”

He showed them a cartoon that had termed the National Assembly as one of the “mental institutions” and then posed: “What is this that would make Kenyans think that the National Assembly is a lunatic institution which should be on the same list as Mathari Hospital?”

Okombo was against the MPs’ argument that they have to give handouts. His stand was backed by Njoroge Baiya of Githunguri. Baiya told his colleagues: “If you bribe your way into leadership, then, that’s your problem”.