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NEWS & CURRENT AFFAIRS

The Nairobian

While Ruto is commander, MPs appear to be at his beck and call

Politics

By Brian Otieno | Oct 20, 2024

**President William Ruto during the State of the Nation Address at the Parliament buildings on November 9, 2023.** [Elvis Ogina, Standard]

Whatever support President William Ruto lacks among the masses, he makes up for it with his grip on Parliament, a body meant to keep him in check.

One would have to go back decades to find a Head of State with as much control of the Legislature as Dr Ruto does. Such levels of approval, manifested in a vote to have impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua ousted from office, were only possible during the single-party era.

Even former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s handshake with former Prime Minister Raila Odinga did not earn Uhuru such control, which would have easily seen him oust his nagging deputy.

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Observers have baptised the current Parliament many names. Lawyer Ekuru Aukot termed the bicameral House as an appendage of the President, on Spice FM last Friday while his professional colleague Abdikadir Mohamed branded it the worst in history.

Quorum hitches

Such descriptions owe to the overwhelming support Ruto has enjoyed since his truce with Raila. Their broad-based arrangement has the Head of State flying high. In Parliament, Ruto has an army that looks set to fight in his corner.

At the National Assembly and the Senate, the President’s allies did not struggle to raise the two-thirds threshold required to fire a deputy president. A week after 281 MPs voted to impeach Gachagua, the National Assembly adjourned due to quorum hitches.

Many have observed that MPs hardly show up to debate critical matters, such as enforcing the two-thirds gender principle and discussing the high cost of living.

Even though they insisted on not having been under instruction to oust Gachagua, it seemed as though MPs and senators were implementing decisions from other quarters.

Indeed, during the debate on the unpopular Finance Bill of 2024, MPs from the Kenya Kwanza Alliance constantly received instructions from State House, where Ruto would summon and parade them to convey his wishes.

MPs flanked Ruto when he announced the first set of concessions and when the Head of State demanded that the Bill be bulldozed through the House. It took a breach of Parliament to force the President to withdraw the hated Bill, with MPs agreeing with him all the way.

Since his ascendance to the presidency, Ruto has been keen to establish a hold on Parliament. His Kenya Kwanza Alliance was initially the minority, but the Head of State would woo Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya MPs to his side.

Raila would protest the poaching of his allies as aimed to aid the entrenchment of a dictatorship.

“Having captured Parliament, Ruto now wants to intimidate, subdue and capture the Judiciary. Ruto wants to establish an absolute dictatorship,” the former Premier said last year when the President went on an all-out assault on the Judiciary.

The previous Parliament was similarly compromised, with Uhuru’s handshake with Raila bullying their way through votes. When Uhuru and Raila enjoyed a near supermajority, they used their numbers to pass controversial laws.

President’s wishes

More often than not, many lawmakers did not read proposals before them before making a decision and were criticised to be mere “voting machines”. That argument popped up during Gachagua’s impeachment.

“Parliamentarians were saying we signed this impeachment (motion) on the promise that one of our own would be appointed the Deputy President. Did that man interrogate the charge sheet against Rigathi Gachagua?” posed Aukot. “We have got a lacklustre parliament that does not interrogate anything.”

Such queries also featured in the wake of the “rushed” replacement of Gachagua as DP by Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki, which is now faced with controversies. Among them is whether or not Prof Kindiki qualifies to be nominated as DP as he is a State officer.

“The bigger question in all this is why Kenyans reserved 60 days for the replacement of the Deputy President to be processed. It is not cosmetic. All these questions that are coming up would have been dealt with within that period,” said constitutional lawyer Bobby Mkangi.

“It is not just the work of Parliament to verify whether the nominee deserves the seat. The work of verifying is the people’s through public participation because this is not just the President’s principal assistant, he is the people’s servant,” Mkangi added, saying Parliament’s work is meant to be thorough.

Many have argued that Gachagua’s impeachment was choreographed with Parliament pulling all stops to have it go through. The National Assembly had already planned to sit on Friday to discuss the replacement, confident that Gachagua’s impeachment would go through per the Executive’s apparent directives.

But the Constitution did not wish that Parliament would be a House that nods to the President’s wishes, dictating that the Legislature would check the Executive’s excesses.