Put Kenya first in push to have electoral laws amended

Until the Supreme Court of Kenya nullified President Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election in its ruling on September 1, the electoral laws did not attract any attention.

Granted, for a long time, Jubilee Party and the Opposition have been entangled in a tussle over who should or should not be at the helm or the secretariat of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, and that seems set to continue.

Our electoral laws cannot be said to be perfect, a fact that calls for periodic reviews as weaknesses in the laws reveal themselves. This, however, must be approached with a lot of sobriety, in an environment of mutual trust.

As it is today, the charged political environment is not ideal for amending any laws, an act that could be interpreted to mean one side of the political divide, in this case Jubilee that enjoys a majority in both houses of Parliament, stands to exact undue advantage over others.

Jubilees attempts to change the electoral laws, ostensibly to provide a level playing field and seal some of the lacunas already seen may be well intentioned, but the timing is wrong, made worse by the haste and determination to push the amendments through when parliamentary Committees have not been constituted in accordance with the law.

Though there is a provision for ad hoc committees, the Opposition has indicated it will boycott House sessions, thereby rendering the ad hoc committees largely a Jubilee affair.

The need for MPs to debate the Election Laws (amendment) Bill 2017 with sobriety, putting the country first, cannot be gainsaid. Like flowers, political parties and their interests wither, but the country remains the same.

Members of Parliament have a duty to defend the Constitution against an onslaught from an Executive keen to exert itself. Such exertions are evident in the current context given that it is the Executive’s displeasure with laws deemed to have been used to deny it an election victory that precipitated the push to amend the laws.

As such, members of the 12th Parliament should shun divisive politics and their hegemony wars and distinguish themselves by how they go about a Bill that has far-reaching consequences for the country.