Who needs DSTV?

In the interests of being absolutely fair I admit that I think that I prefer the National Assembly over the Senate; it has proven the more entertaining of the two and for the millions each of its members trousers every year, I want value for my damn money. If the Senate caught on fire and immolated its entire membership, and you needled me long enough about it, I'd probably admit to missing that woman senator who seems to bring a whiff of the too-new-at-this-game with her alleged penchant for spiritous beverages and licentious behaviour in private conveyances.

The Senate has proven to be a complete waste of my money and it is time we reminded them that we already have one set of crybabies to deal with; we don't need another. The constitutional scheme we made for ourselves, or had made for us by the Committee of Experts and the tenth Parliament, did not foresee a major role for the Senate, bar the anodyne representation of the counties, participating in legislation-making that affects counties, allocation of national revenue among counties, and impeachment of the President and Deputy President. 

If this OKOA KENYA bullshit ever makes it to a Bill-making stage, one of the Bill's provisions should be to convert the Senate into a sessional chamber that meets over the budget and when impeaching somebody. For the rest of the year, Senators can hold as many committee meetings as the Controller of Budget will let them get away with or bugger off to their homes and hearths and stop giving us agita over their bullshit demands.

Kenyans are neither Britons nor Americans; we do not have a Senate/House of Lords hybrid. We have always wanted those people we called MPs to be powerful; that is why we bestowed on them great constitutional power. The Senate has always been an afterthought and the CoE fucked it up six ways to hell for ever, ever entertaining that asinine idea beyond the derision it deserved. Now that we have a Senate, it is time to clarify that it is the inferior chamber and that we don't want it to poke its nose in important matters of the national Executive. It can keep playing patty-cake with the forty seven governors it loathes; but that's it. It should keep its meaty paws off the national Executive and its dealings with the National Assembly.

It doesn't help that the Senate takes itself so seriously. When its members speak, bar maybe the Speaker who is a properly intelligent man, you get the impression that someone is wearing their daddy's shoes and speaking the way their daddy speaks when he's being officious and shit. You get the sense that they are pretending to be grown up, acting the way they think grown ups are supposed to behave. But every now and then one of them slips up and makes an ass of himself, like when one compares a member of the National Assembly to a headmaster - or a gossipy school prefect. I'd like to know where that Senator has met gossipy school prefects. Was he a gossipy school prefect once?

The National Assembly, on the other hand, is just about the best entertainment this side of a DSTV subscription. Look at the ten-day show they put out over the nomination and vetting of the Secretary to the Cabinet. The reasoning behind their thumbs down was something special - something short-bus special. They did more than shoot down her nomination; they decided to vet a nominee to replace her even when that nominee's name had not been formally forwarded to them. What did they care; they had had it with that woman and whether her appointing authority cared to listen or not, they were sending a very strong message about what they wanted, goddammit! I don't know why anyone would listen to the Senate when all we ever wanted was an entertaining National Assembly which has outdone itself. If it keeps up, I may never get a DSTV subscription; the 9 O'clock news bulletin will be enough.