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"id": 224038,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Wetangula",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs",
"speaker": {
"id": 210,
"legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
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"content": " Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am happy to speak after Mr. M. Kilonzo, the man who taught me how to be an advocate. This Bill is important, critical and necessary if we have to bring sanity to the political landscape in this country. Many things have been said about this Bill. It is true that it is absolutely desirable and it is also true that we can make it better than it is currently drafted. There are many gaps that we need to fill to make the Bill truly a Political Parties Bill to help political parties be cushioned from marauders and pretenders and also to enable parties to be run democratically and to benefit from a fund to be set up. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this Bill is long overdue, as many hon. Members have said. Our country, being a multi-party democracy, we need to nurture this democracy through public support! That is why I really support the idea of a fund that will be able to assist in the management and running of parties. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, as we talk about the enactment of the Bill, the first thing I want to say is; the commencement date of this Bill should not April 26, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 997 be to benefit the current Parliament. It would be dangerously wrong for us to pass a Bill that will benefit ourselves. I thank the Minister for leaving the commencement date open. Perhaps, if we want to put a commencement date, we should put it after the elections. We cannot pass a Bill, Budget and allocate ourselves money to benefit from the law that we have passed. So, I want to agree with Clause 1, that the commencement date be left to the future. But, perhaps, we could have said that the commencement date of this Bill should be after January, 2008, so that when the commencement date is set, then the Bill will be operationalized by the Budget that will come in June, 2008, so that it can start helping parties. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, Clause 6 of the Bill that sets out the criteria for which the Registrar should look into and fail to register a party when presented before him, needs to be looked at. Clause 6(1) says:- \"The Registrar shall not register a political party which:- (a) is founded on an ethnic, age, tribal, racial, gender, regional, linguistic, corporatist, professional or religious basis or which seeks to engage in propaganda based on any of these matters\". So far so good. But when you look at Clause 6(2), it says:- \"For the purposes of subsection (1), a political party is formed on an ethnic, age, tribal, racial, gender, regional, linguistic, corporatist, professional or religious basis if its membership or leadership is restricted to or includes only members of a particular ethnic, age, tribal, racial, gender, regional, linguistic, corporatist, professional or religious faith or if its structure and mode of operation are not national in character\" This is inapplicable in the following manner: If, for example, you have a party that is formed to cater for the interest of pastoralists of North Eastern Province, you will find that the entire population of north eastern Kenya is Muslim. So, the leaders of this party will end up being Muslim, and they can easily become victims of this Clause when it is not a mistake of their own. I think we need to re-look at this Clause so that if a party has, as its agenda, to champion narrow, sectional interests of religion or tribe, then it can be dealt with. But you cannot stigmatize a party because its leaders are Muslims or Christians because in one way or another, you will find that most of the parties will have a very weighted membership and leadership from a certain religion or a certain ethnic group, as the case may be. Equally, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if a party is formed to champion the interests of farmers around the lake, which is allowed; you can have a party whose interest is just to champion the interests of fishermen, and it may be founded along the coast or Lake Victoria! There is a Clause that says that if a party does not have leadership from all over the country, then it is not a good party. That, again, needs to be re-looked into because it depends on what the party stands for. If, for example, if you have a party whose primary ideology is to support cane farming, it is unlikely that you will get somebody from Mandera or Meru, whose only interest is Miraa, supporting that party. That is something that we need to address because we might end up spoiling a good law. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, Clause 15 of the Bill relates to what I am talking about:- \"A political party shall be qualified to be fully registered if it has- (a) first been provisionally registered (b) obtained not less than 200 members who are registered as members for the purposes of parliamentary elections from each province\". This falls squarely on what I have said; that, a political party that champions pastoralist interests cannot possibly have cane farmers or fishermen from Lake Victoria joining that party, yet it has 998 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES April 26, 2007 noble interests and objectives! So, we should not have a Clause that is restrictive like this because it does not help much. Clause 15(c) says:- \"on its governing body, a member ordinarily resident or registered to vote in each province\". Again, it does not work. I have already said that. We must appreciate and accept our diversity, which is part of our strength. We should not try to create uniformity that is difficult to police and hold together. We should allow people to be diverse in their interests, attitudes, feelings and behaviour, but still adhere to the centre that holds us together as a country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me comment on Clause 9, which talks about young persons. When you go to the United Kingdom, you will find out that parties actually start recruiting membership from schools! You will find out that the Labour Party has membership in secondary schools, and most of these are persons who are not above 18 years, but they are nurtured into becoming future members and leaders of the party! So, we should not restrict young people from being members of the party, as long as we do not allow leaders to use and abuse children in their political ambition. Having an orientation--- I mean, being in FORD(K), my children are in FORD(K). In most cases, you will find that, perhaps, hon. M. Kilonzo's children have migrated with him from KANU to ODM(K), and so on, and so forth. So, we should not restrict children from being members of a party because that is how we start developing their political and ideological orientation in future. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, Clause 9 again, about migrating members, and I do humbly agree that persons--- Contrary to what my learned senior and former pupillage master, M. Kilonzo, said, people who are elected to Parliament and councils on a particular party should live honestly. We should not allow politicians to live a lie, pretending to be what they are not! If you are elected to this Parliament on an ODM(K) or Sisi kwa Sisi party ticket and you are lured to join another party--- What happens in India is that they do not even subject you to a by-election. They declare the person who got the second-highest votes in the election the winner of your seat, who takes up your seat in Parliament. Then, you go and queue and wait for the next election! This is the only way we are going to bring sanity to our elections and politics! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my party has gone through this; persons who were elected on my party's ticket came into this House, some tycoon lured them and started \"gifting\" them with large sums of money and they left the party! Ordinarily, we should take them back to the electorate, subject them to an election and see whether the lure of money that has driven them away from their original party that brought them here can withstand the test of time with the electorate! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, once again, a person who has come to Parliament on a party ticket suddenly wakes up, walks out to the Press and declares the formation of another party, when they are in this House on a party that brought them here! This should not be allowed, because it undermines the very rock base of multi-partyism; that, people must not be allowed to benefit by coming to this House and, you know, you cannot remove them from Parliament, unless they resign with their own hands or become bankrupt, insane or something like that happens. So, we are left helpless. I think we need clauses that will tighten the roles of multi-partyism. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this Bill also talks about the creation of a Political Parties Fund (PPF). I also want to lend my voice to those who have supported the Fund. But we must be very careful about how that Fund will be defined, allocated and managed. It will not be proper to leave the design of that Fund to the discretion of the Executive. There may come a time when we have a President or a Government that has no respect for multi-partyism. They can switch off the tap and the parties will die. We need to find a way of putting a clause that provides for a certain threshold, the way we have done with the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) and other funds that we have set up. If we do that, whether we have a \"Hitler\" in office or a good April 26, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 999 president in office, multipartyism will still be protected by the law. Parties that benefit from that Fund must continue benefiting from it. To that extent, I suggest that the Minister consults widely. We need to know how much money will go to the Fund before we get to the Committee Stage. That will limit unnecessary arguments and amendments flying across the Floor. It is always neater for the Minister who brought the Bill to bring amendments to enrich the Bill, after listening to the arguments on the Floor. The manner in which the Fund should be shared needs to be re-looked into again. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, on Clause 23(1)(f), I agree with Mr. M. Kilonzo that funds that come in the way of political parties are used for administrative purposes. Parties have offices all over the country. They have programmes to run through their members of staff. To limit the funds that will go to administrative purposes to 10 per cent is just to kill the parties. Once a party has been given its portion from that Fund, it is only prudent that it accounts back to the Exchequer, by way of audits, how that money has been used. We have some parties that have programmes that they run continuously. Civic education and some things that have been mentioned here are not the only things that parties do. Parties run continuous programmes and we should allow them to pay fees and salaries to their members. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, Clause 23(3)(a) reads:- \"The moneys allocated by Parliament under this section shall be distributed as follows- (a) 25 per cent shall be distributed equally among political parties; and---\" As I said, we need to identify how that Fund will be distributed. Tied with what I said about provinces, we also need to define the number of parties or the strength of parties that would benefit from that Fund. When you look at Clause 23(3)(b), it reads:- \"75 per cent shall be distributed proportionately by reference to the number of votes secured by each of the political parties at the previous parliamentary elections.\" Sometimes, you find that, if a party has a strength in a sparsely populated area of the country, it may have even ten hon. Members here. But the aggregate number of votes they got may be less than what one hon. Member gets in a densely populated area. The number of registered voters in Embakasi Constituency in Nairobi, for example, is equal to the number of registered voters in the entire North Eastern Province. When you peg on that, you may end up hurting parties whose strength lies in some areas that do not have heavy populations. So, we should come up with a better design on how the funds will be given to parties, so that it is not just dependent on the number of votes that a party gets. It is also important to look at the number of civic seats held by a party. We should also look at the number of parliamentary seats held by a party and weigh them vis-a-vis the number of votes so that, where one is greater, you give advantage and where one is lesser, you remove the advantage."
}