We don’t have to decrease counties to reduce MCAs
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
30 March 2014
The wage-bill debate has refused to go away. Indeed it has taken some new angles. First, economist David Ndii put some question marks on the figures being quoted. According to him, the projected (budgeted) salaries and allowances for 2014 total to just Sh285 billion. This is quite far below the oft-mentioned Sh500bn. But I am happy to note that it is close to the “ideal” maximum Sh300bn that I suggested in my previous article.
Whatever the correct amount of the total wage-bill, the debate has shifted to a kind of blame-fixing contest. The latest target is the number of Members of County Assemblies (MCAs): we are told that they are too many. The solution, we are meant to believe, is to cut down the number of counties and therefore reduce the number of MCAs.
However, the number of counties is not the cause of the large number of MCAs. The reason behind that lies in the two-thirds gender rule and constitutional requirement that certain marginalised groups get special nominated seats. Consequently, of the 2,222 MCAs in the country, 772 (or 35 per cent) are nominated.
Apart from long distance running, the other area where Kenyans beat the rest of the world hands-down is in forgetfulness. I think we hold the world record in the speed of forgetting!
In the run-up to the last general elections, there was heated debate on whether the resultant parliament would be constitutional if it doesn’t fulfil the two-thirds gender rule. Indeed some women lawyers had announced in the press that they would go to court to challenge the legality of a parliament that doesn’t obey this rule.
Various suggestions were put forward including the insertion of a gender balancing clause in Article 97 of the constitution that enumerates the membership of parliament; something similar to what MCAs have in Article 177.
If we had gone that route, things would be even worse. Of the 349 Members of the National Assembly (MNAs), only 68 are women. But the two thirds gender rule would have required at least 117 women in the present set-up. Thus we would have nominated another 49 female MNAs bringing the total membership to 398!
In short, we’ve been here before, only that the last time we were trying
to increase the number of representatives! The way to reduce the number
of MCAs (if indeed we have to) is to remove the two-thirds gender
prescribed in Article 177(1)(b) of the constitution. That would drop
MCAs to 1,636 but it wouldn’t happen immediately. We’d have to wait
until the next General Election.
*****
So; the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) had spent Sh3.9bn to construct a multi-storey car park. After speaking to a few property developers, I have established that it costs about Sh5 million to build an up-market 3-bedroom flat.
With Sh3.9bn, one can build 780 flats. Now, do they want us to believe that the car park (which has very few interior fittings) cost the same as 780 high-end apartments? Tell that to the birds!
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