A second way of solving parliamentary gender puzzle
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
24 July 2011
From the outset, Sally Kosgey declares who she is not: “I am not the Government Minister, we just share a name”. Then she goes on to her purpose for writing: “The suggestions you made on how to solve the gender numbers puzzle were unfair to women… Isn’t there a way we can change the law and retain the two-thirds gender principle?”
Well, an attempt was made in the so-called “Wako Draft” of 2005, but the clause was written in a manner that would also have been impossible to implement. Nevertheless, we can borrow a leaf from there and amend the present constitution by inserting a new subsection in Article 97 reading something like:
“97 (1)(e) such additional number of members as may be necessary to ensure that not more that two-thirds of the total membership is of the same gender. These members shall be nominated by political parties according to their proportional strength in the House.”
The only problem with such a provision is that we will never know exactly how many MPs we shall have until after the conclusion of elections and nominations. However, the worst case scenario would be all the 290 constituencies electing women MPs and the political parties nominating 12 female members under Article 97(1)(c) plus a woman Speaker of the House.
Lest I am misunderstood, I am not calling it “worst case” to imply that women are bad leaders. No: It is a “worst case” because it would produce the largest number of MPs. Think about all the hefty salaries and allowances we have to pay them…
Though quite unlikely, such an outcome would bring a total of 350 women in the house. To remedy the situation, we would have to nominate male MPs to ensure that the number 350 is not greater than two thirds of the total membership. The mathematical question then goes something like: “I think of a number and, when I multiply it by two thirds, the result is 350. What is the number I am thinking of?”
The answer is 525 MPs in the House; therefore, political parties would be required to nominate 175 men (525 – 350) in order to satisfy the two-thirds rule. But, of course, this scenario falls into the category of “probable but impossible” outcomes.
The more realistic expectation is that women will win about 10 per cent of the 290 constituencies, that is, 29 seats. In addition, they might get 6 of the 12 nominated seats but the Speaker will most probably be a man as well. Thus the numbers will be 268 men and 82 women.
In that case, we shall need to nominate an additional 52 women bringing their number to 134 and the total membership to 402. Check the math and you will see that the two thirds rule is obeyed.
But before we start amending the constitution, we must first ask ourselves a fundamental question: Are we fighting for representation of women in parliament or for gender balance? If it is the former, then the 47 county seats are quite adequate; if the latter, then we need to do the amendment as suggested above.
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