Muturi roots for 100 special MPs

National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi has proposed the scrapping of the 47 Woman Representative seats and those allocated to 12 parties’ nominees and have them replaced with 100 special seats for affirmative action.

Mr Muturi said although the size of the National Assembly would swell to 390, this was the easiest way to fulfil the constitutional requirement that not more than two-thirds of members of elective public bodies should be of the same gender.

“All formulas we have tried to think of end up with too many. Kenyans have to wake up to the reality of this rule. The increase would only be by 41 and it would never go beyond there,” said Mr Muturi.

The Speaker spoke to the Nation from South Africa, where he is attending the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians gender advocacy workshop and where he gave a speech related to this issue.

Mr Muturi said the electoral commission would be mandated to come up with a way of electing the 100 special MPs to ensure gender parity.
Parliament is grappling with the issue ahead of the August 27 deadline of full compliance with the Constitution enacted on the same date in 2010.

Mr Muturi made his proposal even as the sponsor of the Constitutional of Kenya (Amendment) Bill, seeking to indefinitely postpone the implementation of the two-thirds gender principle, vowed not to withdraw it and said the committee responsible had approved it.

Justice and Legal Affairs Committee chairman Samuel Chepkong’a said all other alternative ideas would be considered when the Bill goes through public hearings.

At the same time, political parties joined women MPs in calling for the withdrawal of the Bill, which they termed offensive. They described the Anaibkoi MP as the architect of sabotage of the gender rule.

At a meeting in Parliament, Mr Chepkong’a clashed with the Commission on the Implementation of the Constitution, whose chairman, Mr Charles Nyachae insisted the Bill should be withdrawn as it doesn’t seek to implement the supreme law.

Mr Chepkong’a said government agencies, women groups, non-governmental organisations and even the complaining Kenya Women Parliamentarians Association had participated in the process that resulted in the Bill.

“What they are seeking to do is find a needle in a haystack. They can’t find it. Nothing was sneaked in and I presented to the full House matters agreed with either by consensus or a majority of the committee,” said Mr Chepkong’a.

At another meeting at the Nairobi Safari Club, representatives of political parties termed the Bill an attempt to postpone the implementation of the gender principle in elective positions.

“We, the political parties, are outraged that a committee funded by Kenyan taxpayers to advise Parliament has found it fitting to assault this key principle and the integrity of the Kenyan Constitution against what is directed by Article 21 (3),” they stated.

The parties did not spare the AG of criticism either, accusing him of deliberately delaying the process with the intention of causing a crisis.

“We are concerned that the AG has knowingly let the country run out of time and come at a crossroads on how to implement the constitutional gender principle,” they stated in a joint communiqué read on their behalf by Mr Sande Oyolo, the Centre for Multi-party Democracy’s deputy national chairman.