Gender Rule Debate: MP Sankok comes up with bizarre requirements

Nominated MP David ole Sankok. [Photo, File]

Nominated MP David Ole Sankok has come up with a puritan criteria for women who should qualify for nomination to improve women's numbers in Parliament.

And he is pulling no punches.

In a Facebook video, Sankok rants that women with children from different men are of easy virtue and have already failed the integrity test and should not be nominated.

The Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill, 2018 seeks to ensure at least one-third of the MPs in the next House are women.

It requires the backing of at least 233 MPs. Some have declared their reservation, saying nominations are being used by some party leaders to pick "slay queens and girlfriends".

In the video, a straight-shooting Sankok decrees that those to be nominated must pass his integrity test.

His idea of integrity seems at variance with the Constitution, which guarantees equal opportunity to every Kenyan regardless of love-life.

A clean slate for Sankok means the women need to be married and those with children, have them fathered by one man.

In the video clip posted on his timeline on Monday, the nominated lawmaker says the ratio of representation has to reflect the interests of rural areas (30 percent), women with disabilities (30 percent) and youth (30 percent).

The remaining 10 percent, Sankok pontificates, should be set aside for Nairobi "loiterers and massagers (sic)". We think he meant masseuse.

Speaking during the debate on the two-thirds gender rule before the National Assembly, Sankok said he had reservations on the rule.

"If these gender top up slots will be for our daughters, sisters, wives and mothers, then I support it 100 percent. But if it's for the slay queens to slay their way into the National Assembly, to massage their way into the Senate or county assemblies then I do have some reservations."

Sankok said all women who deserve a nomination and are married must make their husbands known.

In the Facebook video he continues, "If you are not married and you have several kids from different quarters, you are not a woman of integrity."

All those who are unmarried and have children, will be required to parade them and their DNA taken for tests to determine if they are from the same father.

"If one is sired by a Luo, another one by a Maasai … Kalenjin … Indian … Mzungu, then you have not passed the integrity test."

In March last year, Justice John Mativo, ruled that anyone can write to the Chief Justice to advise President Uhuru Kenyatta to dissolve Parliament should the MPs fail to enact the legislation.

Kiminini MP Chris Wamalwa this week told his colleagues that the House risks being dissolved if it fails to vote in support of the gender rule.