Last month, a curious story was in the papers: a section of Jubilee-allied MPs declined to attend a Parliamentary Group Meeting convened by the President at State House. Apparently, the MPs boycotted the meeting because of its nature, which they described as “a lecture”. The President, they lamented, had begun to treat them like children, to whom he reads the riot act whenever and wherever he feels like it.
The real reason, one MP told us, is because Parliament, where the President’s party enjoys majority, is having a difficult time processing some of the events that have happened recently, and in particular the deportation of Miguna Miguna.
“We support this government, even on the silliest or most immoral of things. But stripping of their citizenship just because you can is going too far,” the still angry-MP told the Nairobi Law Monthly. “It is beyond subjugation; it is degrading… And it can happen to any one of us.”
The MP went further to suggest that the silence on social media by Jubilee MPs who usually have no qualms singing praises to Jubilee is testament to this unease in Parliament.
And last month when Nandi Hills MP Alfred Keter was arrested for an attempt to defraud the Central Bank by presenting forged Treasury Bills, MPs from both sides of the political divide – even when admitting to the NLM that the MP could indeed have been knowingly attempting to defraud the Bank – came out to offer their support, because he had been “overly prosecuted” by government. “Keter, is one of our own, and this government needs to recognise that they must not treat him like a common criminal” seemed to the message – never mind that the MP may, indeed, be exactly that. ^
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