Something is wrong, and it is not with the population

Nakuru MCAs fight inside the chamber on March 10, 2015. FILE PHOTO | SULEIMAN MBATIAH |

What you need to know:

  • What is our society coming to?
  • What became of Chapter 6 of our Constitution?

Over the last number of weeks, our National Assembly has been in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Before the passing of the security laws it was real physical fighting — blows at each other, biting each other’s fingers, pouring water on each other among other forms of violence — within the sacred space of the house of Parliament.

More recently it has been about members of parliamentary committees accepting bribes in order to give a free hand to people who loot the nation or jeopardise the future of our society.

The more current incidents related to the National Assembly now are around the question of rape.

One ‘honourable’ MP is said to have raped someone else’s wife while a female member is complaining about sexual harassment by a fellow male parliamentarian.

Knowing how our police operate, I am sure there is a lot happening between the accused rapist and a policeman or two.

Indeed we have read stories about him dining with investigating officers and spending time at his home.

What is our society coming to? What became of Chapter 6 of our Constitution?

SOCIAL ISSUES

But the larger social issues and Constitution aside, there are some things that are simply mind boggling. Some things simply don’t add up.

First of all any man who thinks that when a woman wants to keep her dignity and does not want to give in to his advances is either a useless person or must be forced is not a complete man.

Such a man has no integrity whatsoever and whether we like it or not, such lack of integrity must extend to those of us who elect such people and then accord them titles such as “mheshimiwa”.

In recent times corruption as a theme in our public discourse has intensified culminating in the president’s pronouncement in his State of the Nation Address the other day. I am quite curious to see how this evolves.

As he stated those words about people who have been named in corrupt deals stepping aside, the president’s body language indicated that he was quite serious.

But what percentage of our other public servants is truly serious about the fight against corruption.

There is no doubt in my mind that President Uhuru will have an uphill task in his fight against corruption. Let us not forget that a lot of our politics is funded with money that has been earned from corrupt deals and some of these politics have landed some characters in real high positions within the political hierarchy.

Corruption is bound to fight back and therein lays the danger. A fight like this has the likelihood of even bringing down a government. Are there credible alternative plans?

Father Wamugunda is Dean of Students, University of Nairobi; [email protected]