President erred in refusing to assent to Raila Pension Bill

There has been much angst over the Bill that sought to confer pension benefits to among others, Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka for their stints as Prime minister and Vice president respectively.

The bone of contention has been their continued role in active politics which apparently disqualifies them from receiving the benefits. This thinking is in my opinion flawed. It is possible and acceptable for a pensioner to engage in other socio-economic activities. It would in fact be for the most part unreasonable to require that pensioners be entirely dormant to qualify.

A pension is a fixed sum to be paid regularly to a person, typically following retirement from service. One becomes entitled to a pension by operation of the law. The Jubilee-controlled house passed the Bill only for the President to refuse to assent to it.

Now the Jubilee leadership is trying to force the two CORD leaders to relinquish their party positions if they are to qualify for a pension. They have chosen to deliberately confuse pension with severance pay. The prime condition for the pension is having served the government rather than having quit politics.

It would indeed be double dipping for an individual to receive both a pension and a salary from the same source. The CORD duo is not however in danger of falling into such a category. They are currently not earning any pay from the government. Were they to start receiving government salaries, it would be fair to suspend their pensions. They are not for now. They are, therefore, fully within their rights to demand pensions due to them for service to the country.

It is evident from the President’s memo to Parliament that he was fishing. While the Bill as passed by the House did not seek to bar Raila and Kalonzo from active politics, the President chose to infer such a bar.

In his memorandum, he argued that the Bill appeared to have been based on a somewhat similar Act of Parliament assented to by President Mwai Kibaki towards the end of his term conferring benefits on himself.

In that Act, active engagement in the activities of a political party was listed as one of the circumstances under which the benefits would be forfeited. That active engagement is defined as holding office in any party for more than six months after leaving the presidency.

“In contrast, this Bill contains no bar from such engagement,” said President Kenyatta, “which may have been an oversight since, as observed, the content of the Bill appears to be largely based on the Act.”

He recommended that the Bill be changed to include holding office or engaged in the activities of a political party as some of the circumstances under which a beneficiary would forfeit his or her dues.

In truth, the President is hardly an impartial arbiter in this matter. Seeking to bar his two closest rivals from elective politics has probably much more to do with his own fears over 2017 rather than concerns for the national purse. Even as he sought to reduce the lump sum amounts payable to the pensioners, it is not lost on us that the 60 days he had set for graft suspects to face the law elapsed rather quietly. In fact, the fighting was more within Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission rather than with graft. As for the Office of the President, business was proceeding as usual.

Apparently a full plane load was due to attend the inauguration of the newly-elected Nigerian president. Thankfully, vicious infighting on who would be on the gravy train led one faction to leak a list to the media, exposing the level of gross greed right in the President’s office. If the President wants to save taxpayers money, let him start by reigning in the ravenous types in his office rather than docking legal pensions.