Even though the new Constitution 2010 reintroduced a bicameral Parliament hence the Senate and the National Assembly, the latter, which retained the form, mandate and most powers and privileges of the pre-2010 Legislature, still carries the most influence in Kenya’s governance system.
The conduct therefore, of the National Assembly’s business and more so its leadership, which is mandated with ensuring successful steering of the imperative functions of the House, is critical than ever in Kenya.
With, for instance, the total overhaul of the governance system from a centralized to a decentralized one occasioned by the new constitutional dispensation, the National Assembly has to put forward its best foot especially in its key roles of enacting legislation, oversighting the Executive and articulating the views of the public in decision-making for successful transition.
Is Justin Muturi, the Speaker and therefore the overall leader of the House, up to this task?
Unfortunately, a sequence of events and activities as have transpired in the House since March 28, 2013 when Muturi took over the reins of the National Assembly, suggest otherwise.
Kenya, for instance, emerged from the 2013 General Election divided than ever with the Presidential Election being decided in the Supreme Court following a petition filed by Raila Odinga, the runners-up based on the results by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. Even though Mr Muturi benefited heavily from the “tyranny of numbers” from his Jubilee Coalition in the Speaker’s election, 202 votes to his closest challenger, immediate former Speaker Kenneth Marende’s 144, it was expected that he would right away adorn the aura of neutrality and fairness. This was never to be.
Neutrality and fairness in running the affairs of a House comprising members from ruling party and the Opposition is a must-have ingredient in the person of the Speaker. Marende, adored for his ‘Solomonic rulings’, graciously exhibited these virtues. It is however in Muturi’s time that they are needed much more since he is presiding over a House with an overwhelming majority for the ruling coalition, which he also belongs to.
The clarion call that the Speaker of Parliament must ensure the minority has their say as the majority has their way is so critically needed here. It has however, been abundantly elusive in Mr Muturi’s reign. The majority has always had both its say, way and sway on the floor of the House and Muturi has had no apologies about it.
Hardly two months into his tenure, Opposition MPs threatened to introduce a Motion to discuss his conduct, accusing him of showing open bias and disrespect. The legislators accused him of shouting them down or ignoring them when they sought to contribute to debates or motions. Ugenya MP David Ochieng accused Muturi of embarrassing first time members by shouting at them when they wanted to contribute or erred on procedural issues.
“He is a dictator and not a neutral arbitrator. For instance, last Thursday he presided over a Jubilee side of Parliament that approved the budget when CORD MPs walked out in protest and these are the issues we will be raising,” Ochieng said, as his Kitutu Chache South counterpart Richard Onyonka accused the Speaker of waging a vendetta on the MPs whom he felt did not vote for him.
Besides the open bias against opposition, Mr Muturi’s personal disposition has also been singled out as one of the displeasures MPs have had to contend with in carrying out their mandate. In November 2013, he threw back at Mbooni MP Kisoi Munyao some papers that he had tabled during debate on the Land and Delegated Legislation committee’s joint report on irregular appointments by Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu.
MPs also complained for suffering ridicule in the Speaker’s office when seeking approval of statements or matters they intended to prosecute on the floor of the House and which needed the Speaker’s approval. Others have claimed the Speaker has openly chided and insulted them. No wonder live parliamentary debates that were so informingly vibrant in the last Parliament have since lost their luster.
The media were second in line to suffer Mr Muturi’s ineptitude. In June 2013, journalists were unceremoniously kicked out of the Media Centre at Parliament Buildings from where they covered live parliamentary proceedings and press conferences. Without any prior warning or consultations, clerk of the National Assembly walked into the centre with officials from the Sergent-at-arms office and ordered journalists to vacate to create room for MPs and announced that parliamentary coverage would henceforth be by “invitation only”, making coverage of the House proceedings, the MPs news conferences and committees work very difficult.
The Media Centre was one of the many reform programmes (including live coverage) that Mr Marende had, in collaboration with other stakeholders, initiated during his tenure. This move to lock out the media from their operational centre was to be reconsidered later albeit after a lot of backlash.
Devolution is the key to Kenya’s stinging inequality. One year on and it is already floating in a sea heavily infested with sharks, its biggest threat coming from the Executive in cahoots with senior mandarins. National Assembly’s role as the representative of the people in ensuring successful transition from centralized to devolved governance is key yet one feels the leadership of the August House has yet to fully appreciate how central a position it occupies in this transition.
The National Assembly leadership has placed itself at the call of the Executive, effecting every of its sinister maneuver to frustrate Devolution. In so doing, Muturi has spared neither the Senate nor the Judiciary.
He played a central role in locking out the Senate’s constitutional role in the Division of Revenue Bill in which funds were allocated to the national government and the counties. This locked out the Senate’s input, which had suggested increasing county funding. As a result, counties have more functions with fewer funds, not to mention the mess this has brought in the entire governance system.
Out of the Division of Revenue Bill stalemate, the Senate sought an advisory opinion from the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land. The court returned a verdict in favour of the Senate. Muturi could hear none of it.
“Whatever the court said is their own position as we are going on with the business of making laws and we know what we are supposed to do as we are guided by the Constitution,” he said in remarks for which the Committee for the Implementation of the Constitution (CIC) is in court to have him declared unfit to hold public office.
“Mr Muturi ought to be declared unfit to hold office over his remarks that Parliament would disobey court orders. I want somebody to justify why the Speaker can say he will disobey a court order and still continue to hold office,” CIC chair Charles Nyachae said.
That was not the last Muturi was to defy the courts of law. He allowed MPs to debate the report of the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee recommending that the President appoints a tribunal to investigate six members of the Judicial Service Commission that Mr Riungu Nicholas Mugambi wanted removed from office, in total disregard of a High Court order barring Parliament from discussing the petition.
“It has never happened that somebody in their right minds would take the Parliament of the Republic of Kenya to court,” he admonished.
Out of the debate, National Assembly recommended, and the President heeded, the formation of a tribunal to investigate the JSC commissioners. This was later to turn out as one of the President’s biggest embarrassments early in his term as the Courts declared the tribunal null and void following Parliament’s disregard of the Court Order.
What however broke the Camel’s back in a series of Muturi’s self-inflicting injuries is his recent flip-flopping on the issue of Cabinet Secretaries (CS) appearing before the full National Assembly rather than the various committees. There has been a clamour in the recent past in the National Assembly to have CSs face the full House for questioning. To beat the law on this, the National Assembly camouflaged in a Committee on General Oversight.
The Constitution stipulates that CSs can only appear before the various committees of the House, which in turn report to the full House, or in the alternative, separately brief the Leader of Majority in the House on concerns raised by MPs. Having cultivated a culture of omnipotent and omnipresent, the National Assembly ignored, arrogantly, counsel from all quarters. Muturi, cheer-leading his flock, refused to listen to the Attorney General, the CIC and the entire Executive.
Members of the National Assembly fervently defended their position, wielded their powerful law-enacting mandate and reminded everyone that they must have their way. CIC chair went to court but that did not bother them. They nearly succeeded. On October 14, Charity Ngilu for Lands appeared before the House. Joseph Ole Lenku of Internal Security and Education’s Jacob Kaimenyi also lined up before they melted away in thin air. The two were threatened with dire consequences for their disappearing act.
The National Assembly’s push for CSs to appear before the full House may have been in response to a weakness in law that places the responsibility to speak for government in Parliament on the Leader of Majority and committees chairs who more often than not fumble for lack of proper briefing.
Muturi is a member of the ruling coalition that also boasts of numbers in both chambers of Parliament. He would have won the hearts of his party bosses including the President and the Deputy President by imploring them and consulting behind the scenes before whipping up emotions of MPs into an exercise in futility. His ineptitude in handling matters, which does not give room for a third opinion, bungled it.
The worst came when the President summoned Muturi to State House and ordered him to drop the General Oversight Committee initiative, in what State House insiders say was a dress down. He thereafter suspended the committee’s operations, and ordered a committee of the House to review the Standing Orders. The President, he said, was not happy with the fact that Cabinet Secretaries were being called to the House committee to answer to all MPs on live television.
For a man who disobeys courts of law, one thought Muturi would stand up to the President for what he believed was right. How could Muturi beat a hasty retreat on what he strongly believed in and fervently pushed for? He now distinguishes himself as a marionette, susceptible to manipulation for expedience. He is a pale shadow of his predecessor. “You cannot compare this Speaker to the previous one. Mr Marende used to make very reasonable opinions so that even if you disagreed with a ruling, you’d be persuaded by its logic. This one picks up the law and reads the word without the spirit,” says Dr Adams Oloo of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Nairobi.
If Mr Muturi fully appreciated the tasks and responsibilities of the office he holds, he would endeavor to run it with some little decorum. It is either he will do a complete about turn on his character to redeem his legacy in the remaining three years or he will go down the annals of history as one of Kenya’s worst Speakers of Parliament.
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