If you gag the media, then parliamentary tyranny will set in

History – since it is the substance of time – always moves in the wake of time. For that very simple reason, history is inexorable. You cannot stand in its way, not permanently.

To be sure, history may retrace its path and repeat itself. But it ultimately resumes its normal course to arrive triumphantly at its goal.

This reminds us of the many gains that Kenyans have made ever since the colonial regime, when the indigenous people poured profuse blood — including through the liberation movement in their hazardous struggle to regain their nature-given human dignity, including political self-management.

Through Mau Mau in the 1950s and what James Orengo called “the second liberation” – the multi-party movement of the early 1990s – Kenyans have scored sparkling freedoms. Including the media’s constitutional liberty to publish these events. Relatively free expression (through the media) is among those gains.

Especially when Mwai Kibaki succeeded Daniel arap Moi, Kenyans began to speak their minds with relative freedom and the media to publish them with little fear of negative state repercussions.

That is why it is so saddening to read in the media – as a reporter put it in one newspaper – that “... the National Assembly has inched closer to enacting draconian legislation to gag the media and shield Members of Parliament from public scrutiny.”

One MP urged the government to silence all the media which do not flatter MPs. Adan Keynan (Eldas) has thus sponsored the Bill seeking to make every media criticism of Parliament “a crime of defamation” and to criminalise the publication of whatever the speaker or committee chairman may deem to be false or “scandalous libel” (whatever the latter may mean).

However, of course, all that is Much Ado About Nothing – since clear laws already exist which protect all citizens from ad hominem statements, statements declared libellous whenever the makers fail in a court of law to prove their correctness.

If, with any one stroke of legislation, the House removes all the legislators from the ambit of that law, Kenya will have plunged into horrifying parliamentary tyranny. Parliament will be absolutely free from public criticism. If it is a “crime of defamation” to criticise Parliament or any MP, we shall have declared that Parliament is naturally incapable of crime.

Yet, throughout its life ever since colonialism’s Legco, Parliament has produced some of our most illustrious prevaricators and conspirators. A governance institution is like any other human grouping. Being human, it is most likely to err. Members are most likely to include robbers, rapists and idlers.

That is why, to ensure good governance, no human institution can be declared free of crime – unless a much higher collective interest demands it. The latter is why, in many democracies, the serving Head of State cannot be prosecuted. But, if he or she commits any crime during his or her tenure, he or she can expect to be prosecuted as soon as his or her tenure ends.

That is where the media enter the stage. For it is only through the media that government activities can be made manifest to the population.

Only through the media can citizens express their opinions of how the government is performing. The information may be wholly affirmative, but it must include a judgement on how best the government has served or should serve the people.

As a rule, the opinions will include sharp criticism of the government, both collectively and as individual members. That is why the media are the sine qua non of good governance. It is only through them that the government can communicate with the people whom it purports to serve.

If you kill the media – as Kenya’s parliamentary Lilliputians perennially demand – you will have killed all possibility of friendly dialogue and mutual understanding between the people and their government, and made impossible any smooth and effective government.

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