The 11th Parliament has become a national disgrace

Frenchman Napoleon Bonaparte got it spot on when he observed that ‘in politics, stupidity is not a handicap.’ One only needs to review interactions between various arms of government, but especially between the National Assembly and the Senate to appreciate the import of this.

The roles of Parliament and the Senate are obscure; having been lost in legal obfuscation that always sees the two Houses clash over non-issues. Two years down the line, the two legislative Houses have not even established a standard procedure of passing Bills, and Senate has continuously lamented it is being treated like an interloper. More often than not, the Senate becomes aware of some Bills only after they have been passed on to the President for assent. The Senate has so far claimed that more than 30 Bills have been passed without its knowledge, and that the National Assembly is guilty of plagiarism; picking Bills initiated by the Senate and presenting them as their own.

Alarmed by the rate at which they were being pushed to the periphery; a move induced by their own belligerence to Governors, MPs, MCAs and the Judiciary, Senators went for a retreat in Mombasa in November last year to premeditate on their role in the devolved system of governance. They have not come up with anything outrageous since then, until they demanded an increase in funding to the counties from the national government. This pushed the MPs soft backsides against the wall, and they did not relish the feeling.

But even while upstaged, Members of Parliament saw an opening to even scores and went for it with the single-mindedness of sheep crossing a road, barring the fact that the traffic is heavy, perhaps even flying past very fast. And that is where the facet of stupidity in politics kicks in. First, let us take note of the fact that there has been no love lost between Parliament, the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) and the Judiciary. If ever there was an institution whose demise could see parliamentarians breathe easy, it is the SRC which has, over time, been pricking on a sore nerve for MPs. Nobody attempts to bring down the grotesque perks MPs enjoy and expect to remain friends with them.

Similarly, nobody, or institution puts a dent in the inflated egos of parliamentarians and expects it to be business as usual. The Judiciary rubbished most of the deliberations of Parliament last year, and MPs have been sore at that. Barring the complementary roles that all arms of Government play, the spoiled brats that are our MPs believe everything must go their way. The budget that the Judiciary has been operating on puts it in a strait jacket situation. It inhibits operations when the Judiciary cannot hire more magistrates and Judges to clear a backlog of cases that have accumulated over the years. Granted, corruption had its part to play, but the Judiciary requires more funding to maximise operations, yet vendettas and lack of objectivity have seen Parliament cut down its funding. A crippled Judiciary will not hobble along alone; it will have all other government institutions tied up as well.

Parliamentarians, going by their deportment, are the biggest hindrance to devolution, the independence of other institutions; they are responsible for the slow pace of national development, the extravagance in government and are behind attempts to cripple noble efforts to fight corruption. They are able to do all this because they have the undue advantage, accorded by law, of poking their noses in virtually anything to do with governance. I have no gentle way of saying this; that the 11th Parliament is the worst, that the country has had. It is not issue-driven; it is highly subjective and venomously vindictive. It is composed of men and women who think in terms of ‘me’ and ‘I’. The 11th Parliament is a national disgrace.