MPs pass contentious media Bill

Journalists demonstrations                PHOTO:COURTESY

By ALPHONCE SHIUNDU

Journalists and media houses now face huge fines that could spell the end of investigative reporting, the cornerstone of the profession.

The opposition CORD failed to muster the two-thirds majority (233 MPs) needed for the National Assembly to stop the Kenya Information and Communication (Amendment) Bill 2013 from becoming law.

As a result, the Government has been handed more control over media enterprises after the house approved President Uhuru Kenyatta’s memorandum on the Bill.

The memo inflicts a Sh20 million maximum fine for media houses and Sh500,000 for journalists who run afoul of the new regulations.

It also grants the President and the Cabinet Secretary for Information and Communication the final say on who will sit in the Communications Authority of Kenya, and the Communications and Multimedia Appeals Tribunal, two major bodies that will manage the communications sector, regulate content, and punish journalists and media enterprises.

Though Uhuru’s Jubilee government has 216 MPs in the House, most stayed away and so only 140 MPs were present in the 349-member National Assembly, a majority of them from CORD.  The adoption of Uhuru’s controversial memo took a record 10 minutes, and was passed just moments after opposition MPs walked out of the chamber to register their dissent at what they said was a betrayal of the media industry by their Jubilee rivals.

CORD MPs put pressure on Speaker Justin Muturi to at least rally their members to show up in the House, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

House Majority Leader Adan Duale, Muturi and the chairman of the House Committee on Communication, Information and Energy Jamleck Kamau insisted that it was difficult to get the two-thirds majority even if the approval of the President’s memorandum was delayed.

But CORD MPs were not convinced. In their view, Jubilee had the numbers and ought to have whipped their members to come the House to veto the presidential memorandum.

“What I know is that when our colleagues on the Jubilee side want to pass anything that requires numbers, they whip to the last man. Did Jubilee whip their members to come to this floor today?” posed Gladys Wanga (Homa Bay).

Deputy Minority Leader Jakoyo Midiwo (Gem), Millie Odhiambo (Mbita), Agostinho Neto (Ndhiwa), Ababu Namwamba (Budalang’i), Abdulswamad Nassir (Mvita), all allied to CORD, said the rules the Speaker had issued restricting the debate to only those clauses that President Kenyatta had included in his memo had rendered the debate “unconstitutional”.

Nairobi County Woman Representative Rachel Shebesh, who was chairing the Committee of the whole House, was singled out for allegedly stifling debate on the memo.

“You did not give us a chance to contribute at all. I want to know whether we have changed the rules of this House so that members are gagged, so that we are not going to debate, the way you are gagging the media. We want to know whether this is a scheme to gag us, the way we’re gagging the media,” said Odhiambo.

Mr Midiwo told the House that Article 115 of the Constitution says the President should “express reservations” and not make proposals for amendments.

Reservations on a, b, c, d

“Reservations cannot be suggestions! His Excellency the President is doing legislation. All this memorandum should have said is that I have reservations on A, B, C, D, and you as Parliament deal with it. That’s what he should have done. We’ll be setting the most dangerous precedent,” said Midiwo.

But his pleas fell on deaf ears even as he noted: “I know my colleagues on the other side are thrilled and they want it to go through because it is coming from the President on their side of the House. That is fine. But he is our President and we will be opening a door for a rogue President!”

Midiwo warned: “If in future, if after President Kenyatta we get a rogue President, he will bring a simple legislation here, just one line. He will then go and reject the Bill that we pass here, and will bring it back here with bad intentions and bad amendments, knowing that Parliament cannot raise the two-thirds majority,” said Midiwo.

Speaker Muturi told Midiwo that the Constitution is very clear on the procedure to be followed.

“Where you are negative without the two-thirds majority, you will have acted in futility. The consequence then is that the memorandum stands passed.”