Parliament Buildings in Nairobi County in this picture taken on August 8, 2024.
I believe that our country has been favoured and visited by the Holy Ghost. It is either that or I’m being comical, satirical, even. But consider this compelling evidence captured in one of several confusing Twitter (or X) accounts by Mr Okiya Omtatah Okoiti, Busia Senator Busia and fearless fighter against corruption.
March 1, 2004: In an event of marvellous spiritual revelation, and possessed of the Holy Ghost, the cruelly profit-grubbing Indian firm named Adani, received the message from heaven that the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi Kenya was in urgent need of repairs.
March 1, 2024: Empowered and facilitated by heavenly intervention, this miracle working company prepared a privately initiated project proposal — with all the details and spelling correctly revealed to the Indian clerks — and sent it, by hand, from India to Nairobi via the fastest Kenyan long distance runner.
March 1, 2024: The proposal is received at Kenya Airports Authority, HQ, in Nairobi.
March 1, 2024: The proposal is thoroughly scrutinised and fact-checked, a due diligence is conducted on the sprawling Adani empire to confirm that it has no pending court cases, has not dodged taxes anywhere in the world and established that indeed the company is white as snow.
Custodian of national wealth
March 1, 2024: The proposal, having been taken through all the specified processes, is forwarded to the relevant department for consummation.
You can see, you doubting Thomases, the hand of the Holy Spirit. A process that would ordinarily take months, perhaps years, is concluded in no more than 24 hours; a journey that takes many hours by the fastest jetliner, is traversed in the blink of an eye by a champion runner, the laborious investigation of a big company with multiple subsidiaries in different geographies is done instantaneously, bureaucrats internalise and thoroughly evaluate a complex document and, the biggest miracle of all, grant it approval expeditiously without demanding kickbacks. Miracle wrapped in wonders and magic.
That is one possible explanation. The other is of course that a bunch of jokers sat down and manufactured the whole thing, they also manufactured a story from discovery to approval in one miraculous day in the firm belief that we are all a bunch of idiots who will buy it hook, line and sinker and if we don’t we can always be abducted and disappeared or some other terrible eventuality like that.
Personally, I actually don’t blame Adani or the jokers with whom they conspired to sell us this barrel of salt. Because that is what crooked bureaucrats and greedy capitalists do: they cook schemes. But there are other institutions that have been set up to discover, uncover and defeat such schemes. Chief among them, is Parliament, the custodian of national wealth and the overseer of the government.
In the oversight of government and ensuring the protection of public wealth, the 13th Parliament appears to be a catastrophic failure and one which is so fundamental that perhaps the gentlemanly (and lady-ly) thing is for MPs to resign enmasse and clear the way for fresh election of members with a larger appetite for doing public work. If this is not possible because there is, by design, no electoral commission, then MPs should cease collecting their salaries and allowances until such a time as the way is paved for their resignation and the election of a fresh House.
Honesty and integrity
The 13th Parliament should take its jinx to whatever bad place it came from and stop inflicting its unwholesome presence on this innocent nation. Why? Because it thinks the National Assembly has no authority to review the plans of the Executive when it comes to the disposal of public assets, that it is not the job of MPs to anticipate corruption in such disposal and act accordingly to arrest it, that MPs do not have a sacred duty to act with honesty and integrity in the management of public wealth.
The opinion of Number 13 seems to be that it is okay for the Executive to bloat like a toad that has seen a cobra and swallow all other institutions. Number 13 allowed the Executive to abrogate the oversight role of Parliament in the now unconstitutional Privatisation Act of 2023, effectively meaning that the House removed its own constitutional testicles. If Parliament can allow the Executive to nullify its oversight role, what then is the role of Parliament? Because oversight is an extension of representation —keeping an eye on the kleptocrats on our behalf.
It means, in effect, that this Parliament does not consider itself as representing the people. It considers itself to be representing the Executive, or individuals therein. It doesn’t help that there is no clear opposition. The Orange party is a partner in the broad-based government leaving a few stragglers from the Azimio coalition floating around in confusion.
Do your job, Number 13. Stop being a weak, embarrassing, shameless, flaccid rubber stamp of those you are hired to supervise. And no, they are not miracles, you are being scammed.
Mr Mathiu, a media consultant at Steward-Africa, is a former Editor-in-Chief of Nation Media Group. [email protected]
