Two-thirds gender rule should be addressed by BBI - Nyeri MP

 

Two-thirds gender rule problem in Parliament can only be solved if another structure is created to ensure parity.

Nyeri Town MP Ngunjiri Wambugu said the advisory by Chief Justice David Maraga to the President to dissolve Parliament does not solve the problem.

Wambugu said he feared that even after dissolution and holding of a General Election,  Parliament may still end up with fewer women than they are now.

 “If that happens, we are going back into the 13th Parliament and somebody will go to court. He is going to say the House is not constitutionally structured and the next CJ,  because this is now a precedent, is going to ask for it to be dissolved  again,” he said.

Even if other people are elected after an election is called in 90 days, there still will be no structures to ensure that the House will have at least 30 per cent women or men and so the cycle will continue, he stated.

“How many times are we going to do these dissolutions before we get things right?” he posed.

The MP said the solution is to have a conversation in the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) process and see how a structure that will ensure that is achieved.

The lawmaker who spoke to the media in his office in Nyeri on Friday said Kenyans can also decide on whether to continue legislating gender parity.

“I do not know of any other country in the world that has such kind of legislation,” he said.

The Kenyan Constitution, Wambugu said, limits the number of MPs the House can have and so nominating more people of a certain gender to meet the threshold cannot work.

“The Constitution actually creates a cap of how many Members of Parliament you can have,” he said, adding that even if all the nominated were women, still the proportion cannot be achieved.