Too many questions linger over Monica Juma vote

Even at the expense of delving into territory that has almost been exhausted in the last one and a half weeks, I would feel cheated if I did not give a thought to the noise surrounding the rejection by parliamentarians of Dr Monica Juma.

The question I ask and one that many seem to be asking is: Who else other than the National Assembly is behind all that hullaballoo? What is the president going to do now that his choice has been rejected?

We, of course, may never get the answers to these and other questions. What is clear to me is that there must be much more than meets the eye.

The body language of the leader of government business in the National assembly — and that of other parliamentarians — during the debate said it all.

He laughed all through and did not show much commitment to the matter at hand. When they are committed to anything, we all know how they operate. The Speaker himself led the troops in what came across to me as a none-committal-hands-off fashion.

My mind went back to the day they were passing the security laws, which were then signed into law by the president just the following day. In the confusion of both male and female “honourable” members literary fighting and throwing items at each other, the good Speaker took some kind of charge and they accomplished what they believed their leaders wanted them to do.

In the case of the Monica debate, there was no fighting. There was just celebration and funfare and finally refusal to go along with a motion that had been brought forward by the government side.

What came out immediately is that there is a letter that Monica is guilty of having written to the two houses of Parliament and which seems to have angered the “honourable” men and women.

For this she had to be punished. It was something about stopping them from lobbying with her office about certain things and particularly finances for “political mobilisation”.

Those of us who believe in the rule of law and good corporate governance would like to see such an action as being diligent in her work and the wish to see an orderly functioning of a public office.

Our parliamentarians of course understand order differently. Or shall we say that there has been so much disorder in government over such a long period of time that to try and establish anything else will be resisted right from within?

This naturally paves the way to another all important question about the president’s little project of the fight against corruption. Is there much hope given where we have come from?

Fr Wamugunda is dean of students, University of Nairobi; [email protected]