The real reasons why opposition MPs disrupted President’s speech

As an observer, I followed with keen interest the drama that played out on floor of the parliament when a section of ODM MPs openly defied the speaker’s orders and rose to their feet in an attempt to disrupt President Uhuru Kenyatta’s State of the Nation Address.

The President, who had just entered the chamber and took his seat, looked unmoved and smiled all through.  For the speaker, he knew all the eyes were on him and therefore he moved with speed to restore order and sanity in the house. 

Among the measures he took was to direct parliamentary orderlies led by Sergeants-at-Arm to eject eight MPs from the house.  For Ugunja MP Opiyo Wandayi, he ignored all the pleas from the orderlies to leave the house on his own volition.

Instead he remained defiant and at some point resorted to engaging them in dishonorable antics. Besides hurling harsh words at them, he pushed them around and these scenes were captured until when he was finally ejected.

As expected, the Speaker did not take this lying down and this explains why he slapped tough measures on Wandayi including locking him out of the house for a whole year. Out of 416 MPs drawn from the two houses, the spirited and short-lived disruption was staged by only eight MPs. 

When the Speaker invited the President to deliver his annual address, Uhuru first made these comments, “I am really entertained. Let us now focus on the serious business that has made us to congregate here today.”

In his speech that took one-and-half hours, the President enumerated the successes of his government and also candidly admitted the challenges that it was facing.  He once again reiterated that his commitment to slay the dragon of corruption was beyond reproach.

It should be recalled that when the President delivered the second State of  the Nation Address in March last year, he dropped a bombshell by handing over to parliament a list of 175 state officers and senior officials who were on the EACC radar.

The list had been presented to him by the anti-graft agency a few days earlier. The President asked all those named to step aside and pave the way for investigations assuring them that they will get back their jobs if cleared.

His directive however, faced fierce resistance from the governors and other elected leaders who cited the provisions of the new constitution and argued that he has no power to issue the order. Therefore, they reiterated that they will not quit. 

This left Uhuru with one option to only suspend those he had appointed to serve in the executive and a few months latersack them. His decision to fire a huge number of state officers, who included five cabinet secretaries and seven principal secretaries, went down into the annals of history of independent Kenya. Never before has this ever happened. 

Yes, it is true that so far none of them has been successfully prosecuted and convicted. As I write this piece, more than 377 corruption cases are still pending in various courts around the country. So who should bear the blame? Is it President Uhuru or the institutions created to ensure that the wheels of justice run smoothly?

For me, there are four critical institutions namely Judiciary, EACC, DCI and DPP, which are bestowed with constitutional powers to ensure such cases were managed well and handled in a manner that would further the course of public interests. So, if they fail to read from the same script and support each other, then the government’s efforts would be derailed and sabotaged. It will take time before corruption is eradicated. 

Yes, we all know that the new constitution drastically whittled the powers of the president. For instance, he has no power to fire and recommend the replacement of the officers serving in these institutions.

This however has not dampened the spirit and political will of the President. So far, he has convened several meetings that would bring together the heads of these state organs and the agenda would focus in conceiving and formulating new strategies that would help to slay the dragon of corruption. In the last meeting held at State House, Nairobi, they agreed to form a multi sector team to coordinate this work and the judiciary has since formed a special anti-corruption court.

Notably, the MPs, who blew the whistles, shouted and waved placards, cited two main reasons why they felt the President’s State of the Nation address was unnecessary and should not have been delivered. They alleged the President has failed to walk the talk in the war against corruption and to address the problem of ethnicity.

I beg to differ. The President has made great strides in trying to deal with the twin challenges. Compared to the successive governments including the grand coalition government steered by President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Uhuru has tried to address the recurring problem of skewed allocations of jobs in civil service.

Today, Kenyans of all walks of life are considered for the jobs in government, though I agree a lot still needs to done because the lion share goes to the big communities. NCIC, a state agency, has already prepared a report to address this challenge and I have no doubt the government will implement its recommendations.

When it comes to jobs, the question that key personalities in government would ask is. Are those offered these jobs qualified? If yes, then they should seek to downplay the question of favoritism and nepotism in the allocations?  However, the body language and actions of the President would leave one with no doubt that his position on this matter is different. He believes that in every community you will find qualified people and hence their sons and daughters are entitled to state jobs.

Back to the Whistle blowing incident, the Speaker of the National Assembly Justin Muturi was put on the spotlight.  Hon Raila Odinga of ODM is among the opposition leaders who have since faulted him for ordering the ejection of the rebellious MPs.

However, I am sure that those who followed the drama would agree with me that the Speaker invoked the powers conferred by the Standing Orders [read the MPs’ bible] when he passed that verdict. To be precise, he quoted sections 111 and 24 [4].

Yes, I agree some of these provisions could be draconian but the question is. How come the current and the previous parliaments have never bothered to amend them? Does it mean that they are now being demonized because a section of members who were grossly engaged in dishonorable behaviors were targeted?

The constitution clearly stipulates that the President shall deliver the annual State of the Nation Address. Therefore, if you did not agree with him, the most honorable thing would have been to leave the house quietly or fail to turn up for that session.

It is not right to allege that the President’s address is imposed because the rules of the house are very clear that the speech must be subjected to debate for some days.  During this period, an MP is free to criticize, disown or support the speech.