mzalendo :: Eye On Kenyan Parliament

It is Tuesday afternoon, the first day of a mandatory two week debate
session that follows the budget speech that was given by Finance Minister
Amos Kimunya last Thursday.

There are about 5 MP’s on either side of the house, but the numbers of the
government side will steadily increase to about 20, and the opposition to
about 10 during the hour. The opposition side had Mturi (opp whip), Kilonzo,
Maore, Olweny, Odoyo, Ntimama and others walk in to sit for period of about
20 minutes. Weya kept moving around and sitting for huddled conversations
with MP’s on both sides of the floor.

The government had several ministers - Karua, Obwocha, Ndwiga and later
Kimunya himself - and assistants including Mugo, Wetangula, Toro, and
Kenneth. Nakitare sat by himself on the back row, while (govt. whip) Nyagah,
kept escorting more government members into the house.

When MP’s enter, leave or walk across the chamber, they bow to the speaker’s
chair – and MP Anthony Kimetto has made quite a character for himself. When
he first walked in, he bowed to the speaker’s chair, and then bowed twice to
an MP sitting near the door as well. Like Weya, he kept moving around and
huddling in small meetings, and one time he crossed back without bowing.
Wetangula stood and pointed this out to the Speaker, to whom Kimetto made
some apology.

Meanwhile conversations were quite loud during some session especially
during Kombe’s whose Kiswahili was not as audible or captivating as Koigi’s
fiery speech after him

MP’s who spoke during the hour, contributing to the budget debate were:

(Opp) Chepkitony (I think) Supports budget, but the education allocation was
not enough. He was expecting the Finance Minister to transfer bursary funds
from the Ministry of Education to be rolled into the CDF and feels that
should be the case because the needs were great.

(Govt) anon: He applauded the government for achieveing free primary
education against the expecations of major doubters. He aalso applauded the
move to tax MP’s and constitutional office holders. However he pointed out
that it was untrue that MP’s are not currently being taxed. He said their
salaries are taxed, while it is only their allowances, which are exempt. He
also asked that more money should be allocated to the youth at the
constituency level as a way to create employment.

(Opp) Kombe: Standing at the back of the chamber, he spoke in Kiswahili and
used one of the hanging mics located over the MP’s seats. He felt the people
of Coast province have been neglected in the budget. He appealed for more
funds to be channeled to schools and for free school education to also cover
nursery education. He also asked that MP’s be re-allowed to use CDF funds to
buy road-building machines saying it was wrong to rely on the central
government for this.

(Govt) Assistant Minister Koigi gave the most intruiging speech of the hour.
Dressed in a Mao suit, he shunned the suit (or jacket) and tie attire of the
other male MP’s – and the only other person was like him was Ntimama in his
all- red Masai suit. He also spoke in Swahili and began by saying that the
budget speech was good and bad.

It was good in that the minister had not factored in donor funds into the
budget, which he said come with too many strings attached. He said it was
time Kenyans stopped looking to foreigners for investment or assistance –
noting that this habit had led us to invite and celebrate the presence of
mercenaries in the country.

However he was unhappy of the amount of money allocated for roads in Nakuru.
In fact, he said Nakuru was being neglected by the Government – and despite
Nakuru having given the Government the highest vote of any district, they
don’t even have a Minister. When someone murmured to the effect that he
(Koigi) was an assistant minister, Koigi retorted that assistant ministers
are nothing – and continued to say that the district has also not been
rewarded with any ambassadors, permanent secretaries or parastatal bosses.

He said the 400 million shillings allocated in the budget for clash victim
resettlement was too little. He was also disappointed that the allocation
was not for the original victims of land clashes in 1990’s – but would go to
compensate recent evictees from 2003/4 and only because they had organized
themselves against the government. He also said when a Norwegian group had
offered the Office of the President assistance to settle clash victims, they
were told that there were no clash victims in Kenya. He said that this was
wrong, and if this government would not settle people who had voted for it,
who would settle them and how could he ask them to vote for the same
government next year?

(Govt) Muchiri: Like Koigi, he applauded the exclusion of donor funds saying
his constituents were promised some ADB funds for water development and
nothing has come to the ground in a year.

He asked the government to deal with bureaucracy - noting that it takes
weeks to process CDF cheques, which slows development. Meanwhile donor funds
are easily given to NGO’s who run around constituencies’ bad mouthing the
CDF program. He also appealed for more transparency in the scheme saying
that it was unfortunate that some LATF funds meant for development are being
used to pay councilor salaries – and appealed to the Minister to clear this
up.

Again like Koigi, he also said that 400m was not enough to settle clash
victims, some of whom were his constituents.

(Govt) Nakitare: Said speech had not done enough for agriculture sectors. He
said the fuel increment was very bad for farmers – and this would become
apparent in January when farmers would be looking for money for fuel to
plough their fields. He also claimed that his constituency had the very
first victims of land clashes and wanted the government to resettle them.