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Watching news and reading media reports of Kenyan politicians and parliamentarians behaving badly has become a daily occurrence.
That about 80 legislators went on an expensive trip to Nashville, US, when five would have sufficed is no longer shocking. It’s normal.
I recall thinking our parliamentarians must really love country music! But then I knew it had nothing to do with the meeting because most hardly show up for the official engagement.
It was however disturbing that some of the legislators were denied visas and had to invoke “orders from above” to be granted passage documents.
The painful bit of such reports is that, somehow, money for such travels and for so-called ‘‘benchmark trips’’ is always easy to secure yet county and central governments are always broke when it comes to everything else.
But there is hope yet. A very small glimmer of it, but heck, we only need to let a little light shine… A recall.
This is the window of opportunity, as granted by the Supreme Law to remove elected members who have been doing a shoddy job.
Recall can only occur two years after election and not later than one year preceding the next general election. There is a two-year window to recall elected leaders and it is currently open.
The elected leaders targeted by this law, according to Article 104, are senators, members of the National Assembly and members of the county assemblies.
The process is the same for all of them, but what is obviously different is the threshold that needs to be reached in respective leadership areas. For example, it requires fewer signatures to recall a member of a county assembly than to remove a member of parliament.
When MPs passed the recall law, they wanted to make it as difficult as possible to do so.
They went as far as putting into law a requirement that a recall would only go ahead if there was to be a finding by the High Court against an MP touching on his leadership and integrity in violation of Chapter 6 of the Constitution.
Another requirement is mismanagement of public resources or committing a crime under the Elections Act.
Many elected representatives may have committed crimes, but having a successful court case against them is as hard as impeaching a governor.
However, in 2017, the High Court decided that the Elections Act provision on recall was not constitutional. There were some sentences that were conflicting.
It states that a member is recalled if there is a simple majority, but in that same breath, it says that it has “to be at least 50 per cent of all the registered electors.”
This rider would make it difficult for an individual to gather thousands of signatures on top of the manpower and capital to fund such an initiative.
The High Court also dismissed the requirement that one can only sign a recall petition “if you were registered for the election in which the member you want to recall was elected.”
The court argues that some voters become eligible to vote after election day, and this would lock them out, yet they have a right to determine whether a representative is fit or not.
Additionally, the High Court said the law was unconstitutional when it said recall could only take place if there was a court order against the elected member.
The court ruling makes it a little easier, nay possible to recall an elected leader. It takes signatures of 30 per cent of all the registered electors, including “names of at least 15 per cent of the voters in more than half of the wards in the constituency” to recall an MP.
The signatures are then handed to electoral commission to confirm their validity.
Voters are then asked to decide through a simple question: “Do you want so and so to remain as your representative?” If a majority votes “No” then the individual loses their seat.
The Speaker announces it vacant and an election is held. The individual in question can then decide to vie again if they wish.
Kenya has never had an elected member recalled; could some people try now, please?
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