GACHURI'S PUNCHLINE: More holes into the rejected party nominations list

It is exactly 25 days to the General Election. The countdown is on. Hopefully, you have kept safe, your identity card or passport, ready to turn up and do the needful. That is if you registered as a voter.

And do not say politics is a dirty game. You have an opportunity to clean up, by voting in better leaders that those who have made it a dirty game. And don’t say there is no need of voting, by arguing that the outcome is already pre-determined or is disillusioned by past leaders or governments, because as Keith Ellison, an American politician and lawyer reminds us ‘not voting is not a protest. It is surrender’.

As we prepare for the August 9th date with the ballot, my attention this week was captured by a decision made by the electoral body IEBC, rejecting party lists submitted by various political parties, proposing persons for nomination to the Senate, National and County Assemblies.

There are 20 nomination slots in the Senate, with 16 being directly allocated to women. Two slots are set aside for the youth; a man and a woman, and two seats for persons with disability; a man and a woman.

There are 12 nomination slots in the National Assembly. Political parties are also required to submit party lists, that would be used to top up county assembly seats, to achieve the gender equity requirement in the Constitution.

But here is the challenge; who gets these nomination slots? How are these slots shared out? Who were these nomination slots intended for from the onset?

From the onset, these nomination slots were not supposed to be freebies or joyride tickets for those close to party bigwigs. They were not meant to be employment opportunities for close family members and buddies of party leaders. These seats were particularly meant to give leadership opportunities to people from marginalised and minority groups or communities.

They were meant to avail opportunities for special interest groups to be at the policy making organs, such as parliament, to enrich debate and quality of laws made, bolster the legislative arm’s oversight role and represent the voice of people who ordinarily would have a hard time accessing national and county parliaments through an open, competitive electoral contest.

Unfortunately, a look through the list of persons nominated to the National Assembly, Senate and County Assemblies would not convince anyone that the parameters of equity and consideration of the marginalised and minority groups were considered.

Sadly, the nomination lists are populated by some names that have nothing to do with the minority or marginalised groups. You would struggle to identify the special interests that some of the nominees in the last two parliaments and county assemblies.

The unfortunate part is that there are so many deserving people, who are often left out in the nomination process and their slots taken by those, whose only qualification is closeness to the party top hierarchy.

I am glad that IEBC returned the party lists back to the sender, for review and streamlining. I hope the commission can stand its ground and ensure only the most deserving people find their way into the nomination lists. Anything else would be betrayal of the party system.

 As it is now, the process of dishing out the nomination slots does not favour the ordinary party members. It largely ends up short-changing persons with disability, youth, marginalised communities and minority groups. Suffice to say, the nomination process enhances the politics of who knows who in the party. If we want to grow as a democracy and sit in the table of big democratic nations, we must get the basics right.

If proponents of proportional representation can misuse a simple thing such as submission of a nomination wishlist, then what would happen if we were to adopt the South African model, where party loyalty is rewarded and there are opportunities for growth through the party ranks?

If party bigwigs cannot be trusted with equitable and honest sharing of 12 slots in the National Assembly, 20 in the senate and less than a thousand in the 47 county assemblies, then our credentials as a democracy are weak.

For once, I hope the political parties will demonstrate that a merit can count for something. That men and women who can enrich debates in parliament, improve the quality of bills and motions passed by the Houses and robustly represent the Kenyan people in the national and county parliaments.

But because this is Kenya, I will not be surprised if the nomination process ends as it has always been; who do you know, as opposed to what do you know. And if you have been promised a nomination slot, a word of advise; prepare for a heartbreak! You do not have it until you have it! Kucheswa reloaded loading!