Comedy of protesting legislators and governors
What you need to know:
What do these leaders hope to achieve by appealing to public sympathy? Who do they expect to act on their problems?
Where do they then expect the common citizen to go when they have problems requiring administrative or legislative solutions?
- The increasing prevalence of irrational action by our leaders might explain why Ekuru Aukot’s “Punguza Mizigo” campaign got so much support.
These past few days have been quite interesting in Nairobi. Separately and together, groups of legislators and governors congregated in the capital city to protest against one thing or the other.
The first issue was the ongoing disagreement between the national government and the county governments over sharing of revenue as required by the Constitution.
BASTARDISING
Apparently the two levels of government have been unable to agree on how much revenue is to be shared between them, and those representing county governments have gone to court to compel the national government to fulfil its duties.
The second demonstration concerns the relationship between the two houses of parliament. Members of Senate feel that the National Assembly has not been demonstrating sufficient respect for their House, and have been passing legislation affecting counties without consulting the Senate as required by the Constitution. They are therefore going to court to have those laws declared unconstitutional and compel the National Assembly to be sending such Bills to the Senate for deliberation and passage before they are sent to the President for assent.
The fact that these disagreements exist is not in itself surprising or even interesting. It is expected that where there are two institutions or levels of government with overlapping mandates, conflicts will be inevitable.
However, in an open and democratic society, such as we aspire to be, there are “civilised” ways of handling such conflicts.
What is interesting in these two cases is that the protagonists have chosen to tread the path of the traditionally “powerless” citizen-public protest and demonstrations. One would have expected that these institutions would take advantage of their relative power and use existing legal and administrative measures to resolve their conflicts without literally going out into the streets. What they have done is to (mis)appropriate the most effective tool of the oppressed and downtrodden, vulgarising and bastardising it, and perhaps weakening its effectiveness in the process.
IRRATIONAL
We need to get serious. If it is true that some officials in the National Executive have done unconstitutional or illegal things, then the correct measure is to identify them and take the necessary remedial action, which might include charging them in court or impeaching them if they are holders of impeachable offices.
If it is true that some Bills that require input from the Senate have been passed by the National Assembly and signed into law by the President, then there are established mechanisms of having the Judiciary review such legislation and declare it null.
These charades of street protests by elected leaders serve absolutely no purpose.
They were elected to enact legislation and run devolved units of government, and if they find that they are unable to do so to the extent of resorting to public protests, then they probably need to find something else to do. There is no shortage of capable citizens available to replace them and do the right thing. What do these leaders hope to achieve by appealing to public sympathy? Who do they expect to act on their problems? Where do they then expect the common citizen to go when they have problems requiring administrative or legislative solutions?
The increasing prevalence of irrational action by our leaders might be a pointer to a failed governance experiment, perhaps explaining why Ekuru Aukot’s “Punguza Mizigo” campaign got so much support.
Lukoye Atwoli is associate professor of Psychiatry and Dean, Moi University School of Medicine; [email protected]
