A school timetable can fix the quorum problems in parliament

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

06 July 2008

How is it that an organization that has over 200 members finds it difficult to raise a quorum of 30 people for its regular meetings? When one considers that the meetings are held only four times a week and the organization pays its members handsome salaries when they join, this puzzle becomes mind boggling.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am talking about the Kenyan parliament. What can be done to ensure that there are enough members in the house all the time? Should the size of the quorum be reduced?

Currently, if an MP misses eight consecutive sittings of a session without permission from the speaker, he loses his seat. Unfortunately, there is no limitation on the duration of time that a member must sit in the House after entering. Thus, in the early 1990s, Kenneth Matiba was able to retain his seat (and handsome salary) by simply making “technical appearances” every couple of weeks – some lasting just a few seconds.

Now, there are four sittings per week – one on Tuesday, two on Wednesday and one on Thursday. So, in essence, the law allows MPs to be away for a maximum of two consecutive weeks in any session.

Suppose a group of 30 MPs attends the first sitting of a session, then a different set of 30 attend the second sitting, and so on until all the 222 have each sat once. How many sittings will have passed?

The answer is simply 222 divided by 30, or 7.4 sittings. But after the seventh sitting, there will only be 12 members remaining; therefore it will be necessary to call 18 MPs from the first group in order to make the requisite quorum of 30 for the eighth. This was probably the logic applied in allowing an MP to miss at most eight sittings without permission.

The restriction would have worked work well if the MPs were forced to sit through the full four hours of each sitting. But that might be deemed draconian especially when we remember that we are dealing with adults and not school children.

Nonetheless, it gives a pointer to the kind of law that is required: one that defines the minimum duration that MPs must sit in the house once they enter the chamber. If that limit is, say, two hours, then our groups of 30 will be exhausted in four sittings instead of the previous eight.

If it is reduced to one hour, then the groups of 30 would be over and done with after only two sittings. Thus the allowable absence without permission would have to be reduced from eight sittings to two.

But for this to work perfectly well, parliament would have to start running on an hourly timetable like the one in school. However, the Honourable Members might feel dishonoured by such a schedule.

The question then really is: which is more dishonouring, to follow a strict hourly timetable or to frequently suspend business because of lack of quorum?