Duale shifts from system apologist to government’s fiercest critic
Is Garissa Township MP Aden Duale the new face of opposition politics in the National Assembly?
Mr Duale’s new political allegiances in the House could be seen as his Damascus moment.
Hitherto, Mr Duale, a former suave system apologist, was the face of the government in the House until his unceremonious removal as majority leader on June 22, 2020, at a Jubilee Parliamentary Group meeting chaired by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Outside Parliament, opposition politics had been associated with ODM leader Raila Odinga but the March 2018 Handshake with President Kenyatta changed everything.
As the face of the government in the National Assembly when he was on good terms with the President, Mr Duale bulldozed every Executive agenda through the House with precision.
This included the infamous Security Laws Act ahead of the 2017 General Election despite opposition from Mr Odinga and his camp and civil society organisations.
Mr Duale also ensured that the government agenda, including presidential appointments and memoranda on bills that the President had declined to sign into law, were passed.
But this was before he was removed unceremoniously and replaced by Kipipiri MP Amos Kimunya.
As the House considered the Political Parties (Amendment) Bill 2021 recently, it was a case of the shoe being on the other foot for Mr Duale.
“A majority of you will cry if this bill becomes law. You will be hit hard. Let’s reject it,” Mr Duale told the House as he attempted to block the passage of the government-sponsored Bill.
In his previous role as majority leader, Mr Duale would have done anything, including calling his colleagues names, to ensure that bills favoured by the government were passed, including those with the clauses he wanted blocked on Wednesday.
“Mr Duale helped … pass retrogressive laws when he was majority leader,” said Suba South MP John Mbadi, the House minority leader.
Mr Mbadi’s comments came after Mr Duale accused President Kenyatta of using Parliament to legislate “through the backdoor”.
“I wonder what has changed, because he supported the President for the things he is now accusing him to have committed,” Mr Mbadi said.
But Mr Duale defended his new role.
“I will not keep quiet whenever a policy is violated by the government. For those who want to look the other (way), let them do it,” he said.
For the seven years that the Garissa Township MP wielded real power as majority leader, his colleagues in the House, regardless of their political affiliation, either respected him or feared crossing his line, for the consequences could be severe.
But since his removal, Mr Duale has seen the “light”.
That light is certainly not from an oncoming train. Every journalist who has covered Kenya’s Parliament will tell you that there are two categories of MPs in the House.
There are those who will send scribes dashing for their paraphernalia - pens and notebooks - whenever they are given a chance by the Speaker to contribute, because their word was a story in itself.
This category has a small number of MPs that Speaker Justin Muturi will not hesitate to give a chance to speak on a matter on the floor of the House.
The other group includes those who, even when given an opportunity to speak in the House, will hardly arouse the scribes. They are the majority and are largely deployed in the House by their parties at voting times, as when MPs were considering the political parties bill.
Mr Duale belongs to the former category.
Of late, the MP, once a darling and a diehard supporter of the system, has become its biggest critic in and outside Parliament.
Other than putting the government on its toes, Mr Duale is known for supporting government policies that are well intentioned.
This is notwithstanding that he once said he would take a bullet for President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto.
The House committees on Finance and National Planning, Energy, Health, and Administration and National Security are investigating matters raised by Mr Duale.
With the MP the whistleblower in those cases, the scandals cast the government in a bad light.
Among the issues the Finance committee, chaired by Homa Bay County Woman Rep Gladys Wanga, is tackling is the country’s debt.
Mr Duale claims that the public debt has surpassed the Sh9 trillion ceiling by over Sh40 billion.
The ceiling, enacted by Parliament in 2018, seeks to limit the government’s insatiable appetite for borrowing.
“It is against this background that I seek a statement from the committee chairperson on the total loan commitments to date, including a breakdown by lender and the terms of repayment,” Mr Duale said in a request to the committee.
The National Treasury says the nominal public debt stock, including guaranteed debt, stood at Sh7.74 trillion.
This is about 69.07 percent of Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP) as of the end of June 2021.
Mr Duale claimed that the increase in debt-servicing expenses this year alone has surpassed the allocations for development by 189 percent.
The committee is also investigating regulatory failures at the Capital Markets Authority (CMA), a government agency, that have led to the loss of over Sh36 billion in investors’ money.
Mr Duale claims that the losses, which include the collapse of commercial banks with investor money under the watch of CMA, is a half of the Sh72.59 billion in customer deposits held at Family Bank as of March 31, 2021.
“CMA has failed to regulate the capital market industry, leading to the recent failures including proliferation of unregulated and illegal investment funds and loss of funds by innocent investors,” Mr Duale says in a document filed in the House.
The Capital Markets Act mandates CMA to supervise, license and monitor the activities of market intermediaries.
The Energy committee is investigating inflated power costs that Kenya Power, a state company, incurs from independent power producers (IPPs).
The expenses are later passed on to consumers in inflated power bills.
Calling for a forensic audit of Kenya Power’s books of account, Mr Duale says in House documents that it does not make sense for the company to continue buying expensive power from IPPs.
The Security committee is considering a petition by Mr Duale over claims that residents of Garissa and Wajir counties have been deliberately denied national identity cards by the government he once fiercely defended.
In November 2021, Speaker Muturi compelled the Health committee to seek public views afresh on the government-sponsored Health Laws (Amendment).
This followed protests from Mr Duale that the committee had locked out key stakeholders from presenting their views on the bill and that the government wanted it passed by hook or crook.
Mr Duale has also questioned the constitutionality of at least six private members’ bills seeking to amend the Constitution.
The bills are wending their way through the National Assembly.
Mr Duale bases his arguments on the High Court ruling, affirmed by the Court of Appeal, in the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) case.
The MP notes that the bills and legislative proposals contain matters that were in the BBI bill, which was declared unconstitutional.
The bills are sponsored by Florence Mutua (Busia woman rep), George Kariuki (Ndia), Gladys Shollei (Uasin Gishu woman rep) and Vincent Kemosi (South Mugirango).
The three others were sponsored by the Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee chaired by Ndaragwa MP Jeremiah Kioni. BY DAILY NATION
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