Someone has set a trap for Haifa and it will be interesting to see whether she will fall into it. Let me explain.
One of the most effective ways to undermine civil society in Kenya has been to co-opt its members into the firmament of the State. After 2002, Mwai Kibaki was acutely aware that he would not govern if he was constantly facing off against civil society. So he appointed its members to public offices, and promoted the political ambitions of others. His government enacted laws that created positions for civil society representatives. (The Law Society of Kenya was a prime victim of this tactic.) It paid off.
If it wasn't for the KANU holdovers in Kibaki's government, and Kibaki's own KANU-ist instincts, epitomised by the reckless and wanton extra-judicial killings and widespread looting by Kibaki and his cronies, civil society would never have gotten the second wind it did that culminated in the 2010 constitution. But the principle of the thing remains true: co-opted civil society hard-asses will spend so much time trying to "reform government from within" that they will fail to realise that they have been swallowed by Leviathan.
There is a nascent, but seemingly determined, effort to put Hanifa up as a candidate in the next general election as the woman representative of Nairobi City County. If she falls for it, she will lose everything she has built for herself the past two years, the least not being her name and her identity. If you think this is hyperbolic fearmongering, search on YouTube for the video of the day the President signed the Finance Bill into law and see the meek image that Millie Odhiambo cut at State House. She looks so out of place and one wonders if she knows that she is no longer the fearless lioness she was when the Security Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2014, was introduced in the National Assembly.
There is no institution better at sanding down your naturally rough instincts to stand up for the weak and forgotten than Parliament. It doesn't matter whether you enter Parliament as an independent or as a member of a political party; your name and identity are swallowed up in the maw of an institution that no longer represents the interests of the people but only the interests of parliamentarians and, whenever it is profitable so to do, the interests of the executive branch of the Government. And if Parliament will not co-opt you, it will isolate you, and you will be a lone voice in the wilderness, a person of legislative irrelevance. Can you think of one effective reformer in Parliament today?
As a member of the Committee of Experts, Otiende Amollo agreed with and promoted the constitutional principle of the separation of powers. The executive would make and implement policies, including development policies. Parliament would enjoy the power of the purse, that is, it would decide whether or not to fund any of the executive branch's development policies. But witness the recent determined push by Mr Amollo and his colleagues to "entrench CDF in the Constitution" so that they can undermine several judgments of the constitutional court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court that "CDF is unconstitutional". The reformers, like Mr. Omtatah, have been isolated and ignored and their strongly held beliefs about the role of Parliament have been received by their parliamentary colleagues the same way one receives a fart in a poorly ventilated room.
A woman representative is just one person among 349 parliamentarians, a single member of an institution that requires collective action to get anything done. Mr. Omtatah, frustrated that he has not gotten any of his colleagues on his side, has spent a great part of his time in the Senate litigating in the constitutional courts to hamstring the work that the Senate (and National Assembly) has done and continues to do. He has had limited success, but this is exactly what he did when he was in civil society before he was elected. His election did not change the trajectory of his life; in fact, it could be argued that it undermined it greatly.
Hanifa faces the same challenges that Judge Maraga faces. Unless she can marshal a cohort of like-minded women and men to contest for the 349 elected parliamentary seats and 1,150 elected county seats, she will be a lone voice in an institution that is expert at co-opting, or stifling, lone voices. She shouldn't fall into this trap.
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