Speaker finds Wajir Woman Rep’s sweets too bitter to chew

Lawmakers have been thrown out of the House for strange reasons, but the ejection of Wajir Woman Representative Fatuma Gedi Ali on Wednesday for distributing sweets will rank among the most weird.

The humour will be cemented by her explanation: “The sugar levels of the members have gone down.”

A former social worker who used to give poor people her allowances and even her shoes whenever she was out in the field, Ms Gedi was probably reliving her charitable days when she was nicknamed “Father Christmas”.

But the philanthropy did not impress Narok Woman Representative Soipan Tuya, who was chairing the session, and Ms Gedi was ordered out of the precincts for the remainder of that day’s session.

“You moved around, distributing food in the chambers, which is not allowed,” Ms Tuya said.

Ms Gedi reluctantly left the chambers, with Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro who was ordered out for failing to substantiate his remarks that the Woman Representative was bribing government-allied MPs as debate on a law that will govern election alliances simmered in the House.

It gets more poetic when you consider that the last time Ms Gedi was mentioned in connection to bribery inside Parliament, it was to do with sugar.

Poisonous sugar

That was in August 2018 when a report on the importation of suspected poisonous sugar was being debated. The controversial report by a joint committee was shot down and there were claims that some lawmakers pocketed bribes to have that outcome. 

Ms Gedi was mentioned by lawmakers, among them Kimilili’s Didmus Barasa.

She would come out guns blazing in a press address of August 13, 2018, saying all she was doing was lobby fellow MPs.

“How can I bribe an honourable member with Sh10,000, honestly? What is Sh10,000? Sh10,000 cannot even buy lunch for an honourable member,” she said. 

“Nobody gave me money to go and bribe an honourable member.”

Given those two incidents, “Mama Sukari” might be a befitting nickname for the daughter of a former police officer and whose mother used to be a Maendeleo ya Wanawake mobiliser in Wajir.

A holder of a sociology degree, Ms Gedi seems to have quickly learnt the ways of Parliament where the meek are trampled upon and the invisible sink into oblivion. Despite being only in her fourth year as an MP, she has proved worthwhile by our standards.

Sex scandal

She has more than 220 appearances in the Hansard, an impressive feat for a first term MP. She is also a member of two committees.

“People think I’m a second-term MP. It’s the way you carry yourself. Politics is not anybody’s kingdom,” she said in March 2021.

That tough kingdom of politics tried throwing a curveball at her in the form of a sex scandal in her early days as an MP.

Last year, she said such things happen because people can’t find anything else to attack women on.

“The only thing people can talk about a woman is her sexuality. For men, no one talks about that,” she said.

Her first bid to be woman representative was in 2013 on a URP ticket. She did not succeed. In 2017, she got the endorsement of elders, who she said had a “negotiated democracy” and that helped her clinch her current seat on a Party for Development and Reform ticket.

Time to get a sweet.

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