Shabbir’s Bill a sure recipe for chaos

Our Members of Parliament are on a roll. Rarely before have they been faced with a weightier responsibility than to debate and vote on a raft of laws that will govern how coalitions are formed, when and why.

Few people understand the hullabaloo surrounding the Political Parties (Amendment) Bill, but it must be very important, otherwise one side of the political divide would not be reading sinister motives and resorting to the filibuster, an instrument common abroad but rarely used in Kenya’s Parliament to stall legislative agenda.

However, this is not about the amendment or the many proposed changes to the Bill. Rather, I am more concerned about another piece of legislation aimed directly at the presidency, one that will have the effect of emasculating the holder of that office even more than is the case today. In the Public Appointments Bill proposed by Kisumu Town East MP Shakeel Shabbir, the legislator wants to do away with the president’s powers to appoint whoever he feels comfortable with, and instead, vest such authority on Parliament.

In other words, the President will no longer have the power to appoint State officers including Cabinet Secretaries, Principal Secretaries and many other VIPs without Parliament’s input.

That is a dangerous piece of nonsense, not because presidents are infallible while choosing the men and women they want to work with – we all make mistakes – but because such appointments cannot be made by committees of any description. That this bill seeks to take away such powers from the presidency and arrogate them to itself is really laughable.

Clout and relevance

Sometimes it looks like some such proposals are only meant to gain their proponents a measure of clout and relevance; they are impracticable and of little value to the country’s governance. It is actually difficult to understand what informed such a proposal less than eight months to an election, and in any case, if passed as it is, no president is likely to give it his assent for it will turn him into a cypher in the country’s affairs. Of course, the legislators may have discovered a way to coerce him to do their bidding. They have tried blackmail before.

Let me confess something here; I am a strong believer in a strong presidency, and I have strong reservations about “democracy” taken to absurd lengths. Strong in this context does not mean dictatorship; it merely means that the incumbent must have a streak of obstinacy to counteract those who would use their strength in numbers to railroad him into doing things he doesn’t believe in.

One would expect a president to pick men and women who share the same values to help him run government. Such a president should have unfettered powers to choose his team of bureaucrats after careful scrutiny of their expertise, experience and ability to help him push his agenda.

After all, a president is elected to lead his countrymen and women towards a certain goal – what is known in developmental parlance as vision. What matters is that he or she must be the main driver. Has any legislator ever considered how chaotic the situation would be if MPs interview and endorse the fellows they want to run government? If the kind of turbulence and actual violence witnessed in Parliament on Wednesday over the Political Parties Bill is anything to go by, what would one expect from this lot? Everyone would be rooting for his kith to get the job and get busy influencing tender awards.

Judging from what has been happening since the framers of the 2010 Constitution made the eminently silly condition that a presidential contender can pick a running-mate, but not sack him, such a suggestion by MPs makes even less sense today and is totally misplaced and prone to abuse. You cannot elect a president and then tie his hands behind his back. In fact, what the MPs should be doing is seeking ways to remove that specific provision because, clearly, it has not worked in the Jubilee administration and it won’t work in any other.

Short shrift

I have a feeling this bill will be given very short shrift by MPs, and that for a very good reason. Very few of them would like their man to access State House while they are squeezing him in sensitive places so that he can hardly rule. That is how you create either pusillanimity or tyranny in leadership and neither of the two excesses is acceptable.

And talking of tyranny, what makes MPs believe that Kenyans will reject bad behaviour by the Executive and accept it from legislators? Should that Bill pass, the tears will be premium and copious.

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Today is the start of a New Year, an appropriate time to give thanks to those readers who have kept up with my weekly ramblings without complaining too much. For those of you who responded to anything I wrote in this column, I am humbled. I also must send the season’s greeting to those who hurriedly skip to the next page when they come across my mug. They too belong.

Mr Ngwiri is a consultant editor; [email protected]