Cabinet weakens rules for parties

By Oscar Obonyo and Martin Mutua
The Cabinet has given a lifeline to political parties after relaxing some of the stringent requirements before the passing of the Political Parties Bill.
The proposed changes will, among others, accord politicians adequate time to plot a 2012 polls onslaught with ease in a deal that was hammered during the Cabinet meeting on Thursday.
The politicians from rival camps have endorsed friendly proposals and cleared a host of impediments to give way for easy alliance building stretching up to the eleventh hour to the General Election. With alliance building proving a Herculean task, the new development means that the politicians can engage in lengthened political seduction and horse-trading until a few days to the electoral nomination exercise.

President Kibaki chairs a Cabinet session. The Cabinet scraped a clause requiring the Registrar not to register a political party 12 months to a General Election.[PICTURE: FILE/STANDARD]

Sitting at State House, Nairobi, under the chairmanship of President Kibaki, the Cabinet scrapped the clause that had required that the Registrar of Political Parties shall not register a political party 12 months before a General Election.
Also amended by the Cabinet is clause 10 (4) that had stated that no coalition should be formed less than 12 months before a General Election. The proposals are a sigh of relief, particularly to the political grouping that coalesce around the Party of National Unity.
Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and Eldoret North MP William Ruto, who are the group’s key players, have been pondering over how best to beat the 12-month rule and face the 2012 polls a united team.
If passed, the three politicians from different political parties will now have ample time to engage in a primary poll to select the best among them or alternatively enter into a political merger.
This is because clause 11 (7) that prohibited the merger of a political party with another within 12 months to the date of a General Election has also been deleted.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement may also find the proposed rule attractive, considering its heightened search for new allies.
Besides, it shall now be possible for the party to reap from possible PNU falling out given that time allows for a merger.
Passage of the Bill would bring back the chaotic eleventh-hour political mergers as witnessed in 2002 and 2007. In 2002, for instance, Kanu politicians pulled out of Kanu four months to the General Elections to form the Liberal Democratic Party and merge with National Alliance Party of Kenya. The two then transformed into the Narc Coalition winning outfit barely three months to the polls day.
Briefcase parties
And as if to secure their fortunes in the event of a last-minute slip-up, the politicians have also moved to rescue the so-called briefcase political parties from deregistration. The Bill had given powers to the registrar to deregister parties that fail to participate in a parliamentary election or a county assembly election for period of six years.
Over the years, such parties have proved handy, with parliamentary hopefuls who had missed out on tickets from larger parties rushing in for little-known outfits. Indeed, some like, Sisi Kwa Sisi, PDP and CCM, rescued careers of some politicians in 2007.
The Bill, a copy of which The Standard On Saturday has seen, also makes a raft of other proposals and changes, including criminalising party hopping. Targeting rebel politicians, the Bill, if enacted, will wipe out the practice.
It also outlaws members of one political party joining another political party or in any way or manner publicly advocating for the formation of another political party.
Already, the Registrar of Political Parties Lucy Ndung’u, has come under criticism for failing to act on errant ODM allied MPs, Isaac Ruto (Chepalungu), Aden Duale (Dujis) and Narc-Kenya’s William Kabogo (Juja) and Gidion Mbuvi (Makadara).
The ODM allied MPs, as well as the Eldoret North MP, have publicly expressed support for United Democratic Movement, while Kabogo and Mbuvi have shifted alliance from party leader Martha Karua to Kanu’s Uhuru.
Electoral body
But Interim Independent Electoral Commission Chairman Ahmed Isaac Hassan rushes to the defence of the Registrar, whose office falls under the electoral body: "The law is clear and it demands that a decision to expel an MP be arrived at by the party’s National Executive Council, whose minutes must be availed to the Registrar. Besides, evidence must be adduced that the affected MPs were accorded a fair hearing."
In ODM’s case, Hassan says the Registrar has demanded the party furnishes it with the minutes of its NEC, but to date the party is yet to respond.
"It is a shame that Hassan is openly lying to the nation. ODM discussed and concluded the cases of Duale and Ruto at all levels of party organs, including the National Governing Council, Parliamentary Group and NEC, and has furnished all relevant offices including the Attorney General, with the necessary paperwork," the party’s Parliamentary Group Secretary Ababu Namwamba told The Standard On Saturday.
Noting that parties have the legal right of reining in on members advancing policies of rival parties, Prof Amukowa Anangwe regrets the same can boomerang under the highly ethnicised Kenyan politics.
"It may be legally right but politically imprudent for ODM and Narc-Kenya, in this instance, to push out MPs allied to their parties from Parliament," he says.
The former Cabinet minister, who teaches political science at the University of Dodoma, observes that in the eyes of the public court, villains are turned into heroes by such action.