MPs demonstrated selfishness by rejecting Monica Juma

Kenyans continue to witness unparalleled exercise of unbridled power by MPs. If you so much as throw a bad eye at the august House, you are sure to lose the eye. Just ask the Judiciary, or the Senate, or Dr Monica Juma.

The rejection of Dr Juma’s nomination as Secretary to the Cabinet was a resounding success and a severe warning to those who think that the people’s representatives can be trifled with. Dr Juma’s crime was daring to suggest a limit to the frequency of forays MPs make to her office to plead urgent and weighty matters on behalf of their constituents. As Kapenguria MP Samuel Moroto pointed out “We don’t beg or ask for handouts as people are saying. We go to fight for the needs of our people.”

To add insult to injury, she also regrettably remained most impervious and insular to insightful proposals by MPs regarding prospective employees, transfers and other advanced staff management solutions, a sure sign of her incongruous and discordant nature.

As a result she has been labelled a ‘lone wolf’ who ‘does not understand group dynamics and team work’. In its report, the committee on National Security and Administration recommended her rejection, accusing her of “arrogance and insensitivity.”

“The nominee lacked demonstrable passion to serve the public and their elected leaders.” These are labels you do not want attached to you if you are to have a long career in Public Service.

An individual who does not yield to the will of the people as expressed by their representatives cannot surely be fit to be Secretary to the Cabinet. Such travesty shall not occur while our honourable members have breath and term left.

We know that their own personal needs and whims cannot be distinguished from ours, so it follows that there must be no limit to the amount of self service they can carry out in our name. The MPs fittingly rubbished as irrelevant her glowing credentials and formidable competence. In truth, the words employed by the committee in rejecting Dr Juma are but euphemisms for an individual who will not play ball, someone who has an embarrassingly low comfort threshold in particular situations such as where people are unduly seeking succour from the public purse.

Let all prospective candidates for positions in civil service take firm note. Towards the honourable members you shall be pliant and uxorious. As was so elegantly put by one servant of the people, since MPs are representatives of the people, for Dr Juma to say that MPs were unwelcome in her office signalled a rejection of Kenyans in total. This statement is clear evidence of the soaring reason that often pervades the chamber.

As an indication of just how much clarity and cognition surrounded the debate, Majority Leader Aden Duale was roundly booed by MPs for most of the time he spoke trying to urge his colleagues not to rush the matter. Duale’s suggestion that the matter be postponed to allow “further consultations” would have been nothing but delayed justice.

Speaking of “further consultations”, it has not escaped the attention of many that little effort, if any, went into guaranteeing Dr Juma’s nomination and that many now feigning disappointment are shedding crocodile tears.

It has been demonstrated in the past that if the President wants to have his way, all he has to do is whisper in Duale’s ear and the latter would lead the choir christened “tyranny of numbers” to sing “AYE” to no end. He would then dispatch his number two to lend his omnipresence at funerals and harambees to singing Dr Juma’s platitudes prior to the vetting, to the accompanying falsettos of choir boys such as Murkomen and Kindiki. Indeed if we saw just half the “consultations” that went into defeating CS Anne Waiguru’s impeachment motion, things would no doubt have panned out differently.