Ruto should consider dissolving corruption-tainted Parliament

Corruption in Parliament! That is what President William Ruto has told us in the past week. The cardinal functions of Parliament is to oversight, represent and legislate. Oversight means the elected leaders have the mandate to question government spending to the last cent. They are supposed to unearth all the dirty deals within government corridors. They are to exorcise the demons of corruption in the country with the powers vested on them including sanctioning suspects and offenders for disciplinary action. Moreover, they have more powers to seal loopholes leading to corruption. They are the lawmakers. What else, whom else do you need to fix the mega corruption in this country?

Instinctively, one can tell that the attack against the MPs' outright corruption practice has undercurrents that we will know in the coming weeks or even months. The Executive cheerleaders, including the ODM brigades who sing praises to the President, more than those who campaigned for him are on the receiving end. We now know they oversight, represent and legislate with the sole purpose of making a kill. Standing up for the children of this country bothers them least.

I will be extremely hesitant to condemn wholesome everyone in the Senate and in the National Assembly. Why? A few courageous MPs have come out in the open to tell Kenyans that Parliament has lost focus, deviated from its primary functions and turned itself into an extension of the Executive. The first to make the call was Nyaribari Masaba MP Daniel Manduku. Give credit where it is due. The man deserves recognition for refusing to be silent where his colleagues buried their mouths in the corruption feeding trough.

In their boldness and in their conscience, these few reflective MPs asked Parliament to be dissolved and pave the way for elections. Simply what these MPs told us was to push the dissolution of the August House. Leaving it to 2027 would be an absolute waste of public resources at this time when the cost of living is biting hard. As usual, we didn’t give such warnings much attention. Instead, we got enthralled by the dramas in our garden of political shame. We focused on the spectacle at the expense of sobriety.

The news media have done a stellar job in highlighting corruption in government. Both legacy and alternative news media have presented factual cases in which billions of public funds were siphoned off. Whenever the news media question such deals, the government attack dogs and strategic communication teams push narratives away from the scene of crime.

Now what the President has told us is definitely not to fire the Parliament but to point to where the corruption problem is. Audit reports on the financial performance of the Executive are as scary as what the MPs do in the corridors of power. We have two of three arms of government whose financial discipline is rotten.

It is time we seriously listened to lone voices that care about the future of the next generations. We can only seem to care about the future generations if we fight corruption particularly mega corruption with all our hearts and souls. Failure to do this means that the thousands of jobless youths will grow into a major security threat to themselves and to all of us.

For us to have a peaceful country, we should not keep quiet in the face of looting of public funds. Such greed breeds anger, resentment and ethnic polarisation. Nothing destroys peace like resource-based conflicts.

I know elections are two years away. But, given the ongoing public resource destruction which is a lesser evil? To wait till 2027 as MPs eat away public resources that clearly is laying foundation of chaos in the future or dissolve Parliament, count our losses and open a new page in the history of this country?

The President should consider dissolving Parliament. Truth be told, we are in for another long haul of confusion, ambiguity and horse-trading in Parliament as the MPs and the Executive buy time to 2027.

Dr Mokua is Executive Director of Loyola Centre for Media and Communication