MPs treading on dangerous ground with Bills

By Dominic Odipo

Kenya: Our Members of Parliament (specifically those sitting in the National Assembly) now want to control the Judiciary.

They want to summon the members of the highest organs of the Judiciary for grilling in Parliament any time they wish.

They think that they are the only men and women in this country who know the difference between the Judiciary and the Judicial Service Commission.

They want to summon any member of the national Cabinet for grilling in Parliament any time.

Effective grilling

At this rate, it may not be long before they formally summon the President and the Chief Justice to Parliament for some thorough grilling sessions, given the arrogance and bravura with which their leader, the Speaker of the National Assembly, is now speaking in public.

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That is how Lord Delberg Acton put it at the beginning of the last century. He ought to have known because he had read and taught modern history at the University of Cambridge in England for many years. And political power, as you know, is the basic raw material of all history. But our MPs are not done yet. They now also want to emasculate and castrate the Kenyan media by writing and passing such laws that would bestow upon them near total control of not only the content but even the tone of all our media reports.

They say they want to help develop and nurture a “responsible” media in this country, though they have not found it fit to define the word “responsible” when used in this context.

One suspects that what they really want is a crippled, compliant and subservient media which can sing their song all the time and never, ever again refer to them as M-Pigs.

They can get away with their raw power play against the Judiciary and the Executive, taking a leaf from Oliver Cromwell’s parliamentary dictatorship and subjugation of the English state in the 17th century, but they are not going to subjugate the Kenyan media to their will!

Not in the 21st century! Not in the age of the Internet, the mobile phone and Skype! Of that, they can be sure!

What do our MPs mean when they say they want a more “responsible” media in this country? When is any media “responsible”? Is it when it reports or writes what a particular individual or institution wants reported or written, in exactly the desired form or format?

Is it when such media reports, broadcasts or writes the truth, whatever that truth happens to be? Or is it when such media reports, broadcasts or writes in the national interest, whether the subject matter is true or false or some big wig somewhere wants it carried that way or not?

You see, truth is not always sacred. There are times when the media must trample upon the truth in pursuit of the larger national interest.

For example, if this country went to war with Uganda and, within the first 24 hours, the Ugandan army wiped out or captured all the battalions we had sent over to confront it.

Frightening

Would the media in this country be expected to report and reflect this truth, with all its shocking and frightening details? Would it not be in order for any “responsible” media in this country to suppress this truth so as to temporarily sustain the general morale of the rest of the army and the country as a whole?

But there are times when it is the unvarnished truth which unequivocally serves the national interest. When some five men broke into the headquarters of the Democratic Party in the Watergate Building in Washington DC in June, 1972, it initially appeared like just any other burglary.

Yet, through a painstaking and highly risky search for the truth, the Washington Post, a local daily, finally helped to establish that President Richard Nixon had broken the law, participated in the cover-up and that, in effect, the American President was a crook who had no business serving in the White House.

National interest

Was this truth, which one media house did so much to establish, in the national interest or not?

If some of the media laws which our MPs are proposing today were in effect in America in 1972, the Washington Post would never have proceeded with its investigations beyond the first stage. Consequently, the American people would probably never have known that they were being led by a criminal and a crook and Nixon would never have been forced to resign in 1974.

What is the bottom line here? It is that our MPs need to be very careful with regard to the laws that they pass in the House.

Some of these laws could impact on our national interests very deeply and in ways which the less visionary among them might not easily grasp today.

These MPs should not go around flexing their power simply because they happen to have it. Sometimes, power is best deployed when it is not deployed at all!

The writer is a lecturer and consultant in Nairobi.

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