Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka should get pension from Parliament

What you need to know:

  • Hewing a new law to address the material benefits of two or more citizens at a time when the said individuals are still active in the industry from which they are supposed to have retired completely lacks integrity.
  • Their best guarantee is the parliamentary pension pool.

In June last year, in an address at the White House Summit on Working Families, US Vice President Joe Biden declared: “I have no savings account, but I have a great pension and a great salary.”

This line by Biden, 71, drew laughs and applause as well as the ire of the critical public for failure to save or invest to finance his old age. Notably, Biden is not a presidential candidate in 2016. Come 2017, when he and Obama leave the White House, his role as vice president will enable him to draw a huge pension.

Biden’s memorable line has relevance for Kenya today. Here, opinion is sharply split on whether Kenyan taxpayers should finance the golden years of former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka.

President Uhuru Kenyatta thinks not. On May 15, 2015, he declined to assent to the Deputy President (Designated State Officers) Bill 2015 and returned it to Parliament with a memorandum proposing changes. Legislators are obliged by law to marshal a two-thirds majority (233 members) to reject any changes proposed in the Bill by the President.

Realising that it is an impossible task for a numerically weak opposition to meet this high threshold, ODM legislators have vowed to take their battle to court to ensure that the two opposition chiefs receive “their” pension.

Had the President assented to the Bill, Mr Odinga would have pocketed a lumpsum package of Sh21.6 million and a monthly stipend of Sh960,000 for the rest of his life. Similarly, Mr Musyoka would have bagged Sh19.8 million plus a Sh880,000 monthly stipend.

In rejecting the Bill, the President was categorical that Odinga and Musyoka should retire from politics to qualify for pension.

He is right. Retirement is the basis of every pension scheme, whose generic meaning and industrial logic is to insure employees against risks after retirement from working life — because of old age or ill health.

RECENT DEVELOPMENT

In this generic sense, what the Odinga-Musyoka axis is clamouring for is not pension. They might be confusing pension with a “severance package” that an employee receives when he or she leaves employment.

Notably, even in advanced democracies like America, presidential pension schemes are a very recent and still controversial development.

In the US, the Former Presidents Act (FPA) came into effect only after 1958. However, while the federal law provides several lifetime benefits to former presidents, vice-presidents are not covered under the law. Mr Biden, who also serves as the President of the Senate, will draw his pension from congressional pension pools.

Kenya’s vexed pension debate is seemingly a throwback to the polarising politics of the “nusumkate (power sharing)” hiatus.

In this context, ODM stalwarts wrongly accuse former President Mwai Kibaki of assenting to the Presidential Retirement Benefits (Amendment) Bill of 2012 that entitled him to a generous retirement package that excluded Mr Odinga and Mr Musyoka.

Vice Presidents who enter the presidential race may not be eligible for the pension. Eisenhower’s Vice President, Richard Nixon, who lost to Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election, was never eligible for the pension. Biden is not in the race to succeed Obama.

In a word, hewing a new law to address the material benefits of two or more citizens at a time when the said individual citizens are still active in the industry (politics) from which they are supposed to have retired completely lacks integrity.

Moreover, applying such a law after the fact has no precedence in law or in policy. Even though two former American presidents — Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman — were living when the FPA took effect, it only applied to President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961) who became the first president to fall under the Act upon leaving office.

As former Prime Minister and co-principal with retired President Kibaki in the now defunct Grand Coalition Government, Raila had a plausible case to demand retirement benefits as the only living Premier — after Jomo Kenyatta (1963-1964). But he failed to retire with Kibaki.

IN A QUANDARY

Even then, it would have been unwise to include his pension within the Presidential Retirement Benefits (Amendment) Law (2012). Today, Raila is trapped in the quandary between his presidential ambition and the quest for a guaranteed funding by taxpayers for his retirement.

Another dilemma is how deep the line of recipients should go, and whether the taxpayer can afford it. As Odinga’s former Deputy Prime Ministers, Mudavadi and Kenyatta would also deservedly lay claim to a pension package — although the latter is now getting a salary as President.

Musyoka’s case as a one-term Vice President is even harder to sustain. Not only did he opt not to retire with Kibaki, Musyoka is on the tail-end of a long line of Vice Presidents many of whom are living, including Moody Awori and Musalia Mudavadi.

For Odinga and Musyoka, the tag of “pensioners” is, obviously, unsavoury in an electoral season. Their best guarantee for getting the taxpayer to pay for their retirement benefits without stoking controversy is the parliamentary pension pool — where the opposition duo served for more than two decades. Even then, this has to be after 2017.

Prof Kagwanja is chief executive, Africa Policy Institute, and former government adviser [email protected]