Mwai Kibaki - The Longest Serving Member of Parliament

Mwai Kibaki was head hunted from his new job at Makerere University to come back to Kenya and be the executive officer of the latest party to be taken over completely by Jomo Kenyatta (He had taken over 3 other parties before this and led each one of them to ruin).

Kibaki was too young to contest for any seat and had to cool it for a while before trying his luck in Nairobi. The story of how he managed to rigg his way in is told elsewhere. Suffice is to say he got such a scare that he relocated to his home territory of Othaya - bribing the incumbet to go soft on him. He won and has remained the MP of Othaya to this day.

With the retirement of Moi and Jeremiah Nyaga, Kibaki became the longest serving MP in Kenya's parliament. If he were to really sit in the house, he would not lay his eyes on a single MP who was with him in that same house in 1969 - 74 or 1974 - 79. Most are out and dead!

So one would expect Kibaki to love parliament. It has been his bread of life for, well, all his adult life. One would expect him to be a champion of its rules, regulations and traditions. For example if parliament were to find it wise to impeach a person, I would expect Kibaki to be the last man to go to bed with the man. Kibaki, in my book, would be required to treat that person as vermin.

So, I have no idea why I expected Kibaki to re-appoint Amos Kimunya back to the cabinet. Perhaps I recalled the time as a university student, we visited Moi on one of his 'invite-and-corrupt-a-student'. Kibaki had just been fired from his plum VP job. A student asked him why he had fired Kibaki (he framed it in the most diplomatic way, I cannot even re-enact it).

Moi stood up animated. He told a parable or two in his characterestic stammering, halting andboring way. But he came up with a powerful conclusion:

"if you want civil war in this country, then make Kibaki president".

I must confess I that at the time, Moi was hiding his true intentions which would be to preserve his record as the longest serving vice president in Kenya's history. For a while I felt vindicated when he cut short George Saitoti's tenure at shy of the 12 year record of his.

No doubt Kibaki has scorned parliament by re-appointing to the cabinet a man parliament believes is unfit to hold that office. He has questioned the judgement of MPs (himself included). MPs (some of them) have responded with anger but no action.

It wont be the first time Kibaki has scorned parliament. When parliament sent to him a list of names to be appointed to the anti corruption posts, he picked and pecked - eliminating those not members of his ethnic group. He got away with it. He sent back laws to parliament to be re-made to suit is whims yet there is no constitutional provision for that. He is expected to sign all the laws that come his way (nobody thought a president could refuse to sign and therefore no provisions exist to address non signature).

So what is parliament doing about this man Kibaki?

so far nothing.

My view is that parliament should muster all it dignity (much as there is dearth) and expell Kibaki from parliament - whatever the consequences.