The 11th Parliament has been disappointing

Our bureaucratic alleyways are clogged with such filth it stinks to high heavens, but nobody is willing to take responsibility for its accumulation. For the better part of this year, Kenyans have been treated to the spectre of leaders jumping from one financial misdemeanour to another in high places of government but because the country is polarised and conditioned to think along political and ethnic lines, ordinary Kenyans hardly find time to objectively interrogate some of the claims made either against the Government or the Opposition.

We are all lost and guilty of engaging in futile shouting matches across the political divide, with little being done to address the ills facing society today. Close to two decades after the Goldenberg and Anglo Leasing scandals in which the country lost billions of shillings to fraudsters came to light, the scams still beg answers but there is every probability the answers will never come. These scandals will continue to form the basis for political campaigns into the future.

We have not yet heard half the story on the shenanigans at the Devolution ministry and the Sh791 million heist at the NYS. With more revelations of the purchase of goods at grotesquely inflated prices at the Devolution ministry, the melancholic and dramatic resignation of Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru and the subsequent raids at her residence by officers from the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, all indications are there is more than we are being told. It is curious that someone who has been designated ‘state witness’ against those suspected of corruption at the Devolution ministry should be subjected to these searches. The impression these searches create is that she is a prime suspect.

After this, came the suspicion on the usage of Sh3.8 billion at the Internal security ministry which saw an agitated Mr Joseph Nkaissery, Cabinet Secretary for Internal Security order the arrest of parliamentary editors from The Standard and Nation media houses who published the story. Am aware the matter is still touchy hence, I will not dwell on it because the minister can afford to hide behind meaningless phrases like ‘ state security’ to do as he pleases.

Last week’s revelations that some former Members of Parliament are still on the payroll raises serious questions on the integrity ofParliament. It is not the first time the august house has come under scrutiny on matters of integrity which have cast Parliament into disrepute.

Yet, like disgraced former Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru who sought to exonerate herself from the shady deals at the NYS and Devolution ministry by declaring she was not the accounting officer, Mr Justin Muturi, the Speaker of the National Assembly and chair of the Parliamentary Service Commission could only say he was not in charge of the payroll. Like Ms. Waiguru, he avers he was the whistle blower; how fortuitous!

The ignominy that the 11th Parliament, under Mr Muturi’s stewardship, has gone through cannot go unremarked. A Parliament that must be above reproach to carry out its oversight duties effectively has spared no opportunity to debase itself. That a corrupt parliament should deign to vet appointees to public offices without making a mockery of the whole exercise is worrisome. These shambolic exercises could be having a direct bearing on the steep rise in corruption within government and its institutions on the simple premise birds of the same feathers instinctively flock together.

We recall that the Parliamentary Accounts Committee was disbanded early this year for having fallen prey to the ogre of corruption. Ultimately, the committee’s decisions are said to have been dictated by the amount of money those under probe were willing to part with.

Some Members of Parliament have been accused of making false mileage claims alongside claims for sitting allowances in meetings that never took place for lack of quorum. MPs make unnecessary trips abroad and despite perfunctory admonition from the Speaker, they have chosen to ignore him so much so that they travel at the taxpayers’ expense to Ethiopia, India and Netherlands to learn culinary skills that can only serve to add to the layer of fat around their impressive waistlines.

Absenteeism in Parliament has become chronic but rather than act tough on deviant MPs, Mr Muturi issues harmless edicts that are deviously circumvented if not ignored completely.

In December 2014, Mr Muturi allowed the The Security Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2014 to pass under circumstances that would have led to deferment anywhere else. Consequently, it was easy for the public to conclude, rightly or wrongly, that he was acting on explicit instructions from a superior authority.

The role of Parliament in establishing tenets of good governance cannot be over emphasised. The question then is; how has Mr Muturi acquitted himself in this regard? Is the current Parliament better than the one that preceded it or worse?

In September this year, a Ugandan MP, Yokasi Bihande, lost his seat and was ordered to refund all the salary he had received following his conviction on charges of dishonesty and ineptitude by Uganda’s Constitutional Court. We need such decisive action here to make MPs toe the line.