mzalendo :: Eye On Kenyan Parliament

In the coming months Mzalendo will be profiling some of the most active constituencies in terms of comments. We will also have a special focus on constituencies being represented by female MPs.

As part of our efforts to showcase the potential impact of combining technology with local knowledge, we have relied on local correspondents to provide us with these profiles.

Let us know what you think about the profiles and help spread the word.

If you would like to see your constituency profiled, please continue to contribute actively to the website.

What’s New

Another round of improvements and updates to make it easier for Mzalendo.com to use

We now have a continuous ticker of the number of aspirants in the database

There is now a new section to track MP and Aspirant Comment statistics

We’ve also added a new section on the home page sidebar to allow you to view additional aspirant and MP information, such as campaign websites, constituency websites, campaign websites and blogs for all MPs and aspirants from a central location.

We’ve added Aspirant Comment Statistics so you can track comments from the public on new aspirants. This is a very neat feature — now you can have an idea about the aspirants before you vote.

We’ve also fixed a bug on MP Comment Statistics where it would include flagged comments in the count. This has bee corrected.

To more easily keep track of new comments, we’ve indicated the date of each comment on the sidebar summary

You can also now view the number of comments directly from the MP and Aspirant profiles

What’s Changed

The purpose of the MP and Aspirant comments is to solicit constructive information and insight from the public, and allow questions to be put to MPs and aspirants. Some Mzalendo users habitually abuse this facility to settle scores, real or imagined, with the aspirants, MPs and other Mzalendo users. We now shall not hesitate to ban abusers from the site indefinitely. You will be banned of you do any of the following:

1. Use foul language of any kind. This site is used by people of all ages across the world, and therefore reflects on us as Kenyans. Be mindful of others.
2. Abuse MPs or aspirants. No matter what your differences may be, put them across civilly.
3. Abuse of other Mzalendo users.
4. Peddling of rumours and innuendo. If you don’t have any evidence, be quiet. And no, “everyone knows” does not constitute evidence.

BBC Outlook profiled Mzalendo on its radio show today. Click here to listen, the story is at the very end.

We’re now up to 608 aspirants in the searchable database. As usual, if you have more information, let us know

If you are in Kenya and didn’t catch us on KTN last night, Reuters Africa Journal’s feature on Mzalendo will be repeated this Saturday at 12:30pm.

Are you a regular Mzalendo user based in Nairobi? If you are interested in being interviewed on your views about Mzalendo by Reuters, please get in touch with us via the contact page.

Now that we put in place a facility to track aspants, we have been working on building the database.

We’ve added details for about 110 aspirants, so now we have details for 426 aspirants from 62 constituences!

We’ll continue to keep you informed whenever we make updates.

As ever, contact us if you have more information to add, or corrections to make or even to give ideas!

We’ve been buring the midnight oil to add quite some exciting udates to mzalendo — we have built and are populating a searchable database of parliamentary aspirants.

Why? So you can know them:

• Who they are
• Where they are standing
• Their background and history
• What they stand for: their vision

We’re still iroing out rough edges but we think it is stable enough for you to use

This link takes you to a listing of all aspirants

Clicking the constituency link will give you a listing of all other aspirants, as well as the incumbent

Clicking the aspirant gives you their details

The public can also leave comments for each aspirant.

Naturally a search facility is available

This takes you to the query page where you can search on:

• Name
• Gender
• Age
• Province
• District
• Party

So far we have about 317 aspirants (yes, three hundred and 17) and that is only from 45 constituencies. We’re still populating the data on a daly basis.

As usual for corrections, additions, suggestions, etc, contact us

First, an apology for the lack of updates. We are two very time-constrained volunteers.

Second, we welcome to all the new visitors who came across this site via the BBC. Keep your thoughts, comments and suggestions coming.

On to Parliament news.

Parliament was reconvened this week. It is unlikely much work will be done during this session as election fever sets in. A couple of things worth highlighting from this week:

- A project to introduce live broadcasting of Parliament sessions quietly shelved after “internal and external” opposition.

- A new House Business Committee is appointed.

- Accusations of nepotism with regards to Parliamentary staff hiring.

- MP Peter Odoyo calls for more substantive media coverage of Parliament (we agree!).

Just in case you thought it wasn’t possible to have more “all politics all the time” in Kenya, there is no doubt that 2007 will represent a new high-mark as far as politiking in Kenya goes. Beyond the usual jostling for power that we’ve become accustomed to with the current crop of politicians and political parties, there are attempts to encourage “new faces” to run for parliament and to get the idea of a “third force” or “alternative force” to emerge and take hold.

For instance, the advertisement on a workshop for new 2007 civic and parliamentary aspirants appeared in the papers this week and we are working to see whether we can cover the event for our readers.

Note: a quick Google search for Pace International Kenya and the Martin Luther King Foundation Africa revealed no hits.

Other recent initiatives around inspiring young/new 2007 aspirants include:

1. Youth for leadership 2007 (features profiles of aspirants as well)

2. A new party called Wazalendo (site seems to be down though).

3. The Coalition of Young Kenyan Voters - just seen a brief mention in the press.

We will try and do our best to cover these initiatives as they crop up and if there is enough interest, perhaps offer profiles of aspiring candidates. If you have any recommendations regarding what kind of coverage you’d like to see in 2007, please drop us a line.

AOB: Mzalendo Housekeeping News

1. Answers to questions asked in Parliament: We have now started including answers to questions asked in Parliament. This gives you an opportunity to assess not just MP participation, but also the Government’s participation in Parliament. It will take us a while to catch up completely so please bear with us.

2. Abuse of the comment facility: While the majority of the commenters are using the comment facility responsibly, we are experiencing persistent cases of abuse, particularly in the case of the one MP who has chosen to respond to his constituent’s questions. We are concerned that this kind of behavior will discourage / is discouraging MP’s from taking Mzalendo seriously and from being willing to engage with their constituents. Our attempts to minimize abuse by deleting inappropriate comments seem to have had a minimal effect with certain individuals. We are therefore going to resort to other more draconian measures, including blocking IP addresses, if we have to and would like to remind folks who leave their comments to please avoid engaging in the same kind of petty and immature behavior that often disgusts you when it comes from you political representatives.

3. Standing orders: You can now easily access the standing orders from the front page.