Uhuru, Raila in dilemma over women seats

Women representatives Cecily Mbarire (left) and Priscilla Nyokabi.

Furious women MPs rejected suggestions that 47 elective county seats allocated for their gender in Parliament should be scrapped, as heated debate continued on the contentious two-thirds gender rule.

The row over constitutional affirmative action has sucked in President Uhuru Kenyatta and Opposition leader Raila Odinga after women MPs demanded the two leaders direct their respective coalitions to defend their special slots.

Uhuru and Raila are faced with the dilemma of either siding with women and affirmative action groups given the weight of the female voting bloc or endorsing a bill that seeks phased implementation of the rule, to address the attendant economic burden and political sensitivities, especially from male colleagues.

On Tuesday, 13 of the female MPs appealed to Uhuru, his deputy William Ruto and Raila to rally their MPs to reject a bill by Ainabkoi MP Samuel Chepkonga that seeks to indefinitely postpone the realisation of the gender quota.

On Wednesday, the Political Parties' Caucus under the Centre for Multiparty Democracy (CMD) told both Uhuru and Raila that they will be betraying women if they support the Chepkonga bill as it goes against Jubilee and CORD manifestos.

CMD argues that the Jubilee manifesto outlined that they shall "fully implement the one third rule in all Government appointments" while CORD manifesto committed the coalition to "promote full participation of women and men in all spheres of national and county life".

And Thursday, women MPs held a press conference to reject a proposal by National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi to scrap the 47 woman representative positions and instead provide for the election of 100 women MPs through clustering of the current 290 constituencies.

The female legislators termed the proposal as an affront to the constitutional gains for women and questioned Muturi's impartiality.

"We were quite shocked by the speaker's utterances since he had not consulted us and we want to assume he was merely giving his opinion. But given his position as an arbitrator, he cannot now preside over debate of the bill that seeks to address the impasse," Runyenjes MP Cecily Mbarire said.

The 20 women MPs who addressed the press conference at Parliament Buildings accused Muturi of showing open bias.

But in a quick rejoinder, the Speaker refuted the claims saying he was misunderstood.

"Mine is a proposal to enrich the debate. I think many have not even taken time to digest the proposal. I don't introduce bills and specifically Article 122 of the Constitution bars me from voting in the House. Therefore regardless of what views I hold, they count for zero in the House when it comes to decision making. Let them relax," Muturi told The Standard from South Africa.

And Leader of Majority in the National Assembly Aden Duale told women legislators to lobby their male colleagues instead of resorting to protests.

"We have two options on the table: first is lifting Article 177 of the Constitution and allowing a top-up list to go to political parties or we have two woman representatives elected per county to make it 94. In both scenarios, the highest it can go is 104," Ms Mbarire said.

Nyeri Woman Representative Priscilla Nyokabi added: "We are not going back to ask whether current women MPs are doing enough or not, or if women are 52 per cent of the population or not; all we want is the Constitution implemented."

Mombasa Women Rep Mishi Juma accused Muturi and Chepkonga of trying to reverse the gains made under the new law while her Nairobi counterpart Rachel Shebesh termed the two proposals as "an assault on the work women have done in the past several years".