Resolve the one-third gender tangle, without adding burden of more MPs
What you need to know:
- Kenyans cannot carry the weight of a bloated legislature so solution should be weaved on reduced numbers.
- Much of the talk going round is polemics and hot air.
The muddle over what to do about the so-called one-third gender rule in Parliament has reopened the national conversation about our bloated governance structures.
It is about time.
Two serious voices have floated ideas that should energise the debate.
On the one hand is the National Assembly’s Budget and Appropriations committee that tasked a professional team to “audit” the cost of the Constitution and its implementation. Chaired by Auditor-General Edward Ouko, the team has made public a set of recommendations.
A key one is to halve the number of wards across the country, which are currently 1,450. However, this would not automatically translate to halving the size of county assemblies and the number of MCAs. Because of the gender rule, the committee recommended that each ward elect a man and woman.
Presently, counties have been forced to nominate 600 women MCAs to meet the gender shortfall. This has pushed the total to 2,200 well-fed, well-paid MCAs countrywide. That figure is larger than the standing army of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. Plus our MCAs are much better paid.
The committee also made proposals to slash the current parliamentary constituencies. Speaking separately, Micah Cheserem of the Commission for Revenue Allocation was specific. He suggested we reduce the current 290 constituencies to 150. Each constituency would then elect a man and a woman, capping the total number of MPs at no more than 300.
The present figure for the National Assembly, including nominated and special women seats, is 350 seats. When you add the 68 Senate members (elected and nominated), you come to a grand total of 418 seats in Parliament.
Whenever this lot together with their retinue of bodyguards, drivers and hangers-on descend for a “seminar” on South Coast’s Leisure Lodge, the taxpayer money splashed out makes the recent beatification event in Nyeri look like a beggars’ parade.
SHOUTED DOWN
Personally I still find Mr Cheserem’s number of 300 seats too high. But I appreciate we must start from somewhere.
The headache, as everybody is now finding out, is the in-built one-third gender rule. When the Speaker of the National Assembly Justin Muturi suggested a rethink of entrenched women’s seats within a new affirmative action model, he was shouted down by an agitated caucus of women MPs.
A Bill by Ainabkoi MP Samuel Chepkonga to postpone implementation of the gender rule for a year while heads cool off — a Bill the Attorney-General supports — is similarly facing heavy weather from women activists inside and outside Parliament.
Much of the talk going round is polemics and hot air. Nobody wants to scrap the constitutional requirement. We have gone beyond that phase. The hysterical lectures we are hearing from “café” women politicians about “patriarchy” (and how oppressive it is to women) are beside the point.
The discussion at this stage is, or ought to be, about workable formulas to resolve this gender rule issue.
People should be busy giving their two bits’ worth. Runyenjes MP Cecily Mbarire wants each county to be electing two women representatives.
That will double the guaranteed women’s seats in the National Assembly to 94 — and swell overall numbers. Narc Kenya leader Martha Karua has lent her backing to the idea of political parties being required to draw up fixed lists of women candidates, something which opens a different can of worms.
Ndhiwa’s Agostinho Neto is peddling another plan to reduce the constituencies to 210, but to increase the number of MPs with two elected special women’s seats per county as proposed by Ms Mbarire. Rather than go down, the overall numbers keep rising. Believe you me, Wanjiku will not tolerate that.
Other schemes seek to have counties be represented by two elected senators, one from each gender (which will bloat the number of elected senators to 94).
Curiously, none of those pushing their proposals has had the sense — and courage — to recommend what should be the best fate for the Senate. Scrap it.
