Parliament the weakest link in our democratic chain

Looking down from Upper Hill, the eye will land on a brownish, shiny dome gleaming in the city’s sunshine.

It is unfinished, but one can’t help but be swept away by its majestic posture overlooking the often-clogged Uhuru Highway and Parliament Road, and Haile Selassie Avenue on the other side.

Built at a cost of Sh6 billion, the 26-floor office block is yet to be completed seven years later. Not to begrudge the MPs’ (the new tenants) sense of importance, the building is a symbol of extravagance.

A car grant, free serviced office space, numerous sitting allowances and to top that, the power to adjust their salaries as they so wish puts Kenyan MPs in a class of their own.

They also have the interest-free mortgage for a city home and an exorbitant medical and life cover that few societies enjoy. 

The mumblings from the honourable members in the wake of sharp fuel prices last month would make one think they are helpless or they care so much. They actually care less.

When measured in terms of output, the MPs are an expensive endeavour and our Legislature a sorry experiment in parliamentary democracy.

In truth, the MPs have made heavy weather of their day jobs; protecting the interests of the electorate by exercising objective oversight over the Executive.

Rather than serve the people, the MPs have been too gullible to propagate the lie that the Executive is free to do as it wishes with that authority. And so rather than offer a counterbalance to Executive excesses, MPs – who ordinarily enjoy constitutional sovereignty- have been obliging accomplices in the travesty unravelling in our institutions.

In 2018, the MPs capitulated to President Uhuru Kenyatta and former PM Raila Odinga to vote for proposals contained in the former’s memorandum objecting to the 2018/19 Finance Bill and thus reinstating VAT (8 per cent) on fuel products.

And just like then, the whimpers from the MPs over the fuel prices are nothing more than political posturing. MPs hardly find their voice when it matters for ordinary Kenyans.

In most of what they do, MPs demonstrate a lack of principle or the capacity to do the right thing. Fumbling even in the most basic of tasks. Their main task remains making laws yet a few of them have originated any groundbreaking law.

And even vetting of presidential nominees has been a shameful sham that has done more to entrench patronage and negative partisanship in the body politic than anything else.

MPs have been slow to question why the government spends more on itself and so little on the people even as they decry spending their salaries on the constituents’ welfare issues. It seems they would rather they go on with that than initiate reforms that will open up the economy and ensure increased economic productivity.

Many times over, the World Bank has reckoned that the government is the one driving the economy and not the private sector- the biggest and largest employer and the main taxpayer- as should be the case like in most stable economies.

Worst of all, Parliament has done little to tap and channel genuine grievance – the result of our brand of politics that is largely attritional and exclusivist. They don’t inspire confidence. That is why it is easy for the public to believe media reports about a fake BBI Bill than James Orengo’s and Muturi Kigano’s incessant denials.

Mr Kipkemboi is Partnerships and Special Projects Editor, Standard Group