Perhaps the only thing worse than Kenya’s tribally divisive political rhetoric is weaponised primitivity. This is the most apt phrase to describe some of the clips played at the impeachment debate of Meru Governor Kawira Mwangaza, on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday and Wednesday last week.
In the videos, at least one male politician from Meru county was captured making extremely sexist remarks directed at the Governor. Several male politicians, including the Deputy Governor, were present and cheering.
In Kenya’s traditionally male-dominated politics, it takes quite some effort to get male politicians thoroughly disgusted by misogyny. Yet several male senators were sufficiently offended by the audiovisuals from Meru that they remembered their love for their daughters and wives and saved the Meru Governor.
It all prompted Homa Bay Senator Moses Kajwang’ to remark that at that moment, everyone in Meru with the exception of the governor and her husband “appeared mad”.
When the 2010 Constitution created devolved units and handed the oversight role to county assemblies, part of the expectation within the citizenry was that this evolution would also rid us of councillors, or more precisely, the image of semi-literate leaders punching each other senseless and standing on top of tables to make their points, at the lowest electoral units.
County assemblies were meant to be more professional, calmer and more consultative in their oversight duties, far away from the pettiness and rabid abrasiveness of most of the old county councils.
Indeed, when the same Constitution gave the solemn responsibility of impeaching wayward governors to the county assemblies, it certainly never envisaged that this would turn the ward representatives into the equivalent of monkeys with loaded guns, unleashing their lethal power without provocation.
If the Senate vote was anything to go by, all the seven grounds for impeachment were frivolous, even though to be fair, the vote was quite close on two of the charges.
In effect, and especially because this was the second time Governor Kawira was being hauled before the Senate by the Meru county assembly, the Senate essentially made it known there were other reasons for the vindictive manner in which the county assembly was treating the Governor.
It fell just short of mentioning gender as the real cause. But any casual observer would have made a predictable conclusion after watching some of the evidence presented by her legal team.
There have been suggestions within the political grapevine that some big fish in government wanted the Governor out, as part of ongoing push and pull for supremacy in the Mt Kenya region.
The prompt presence of Public Service CS Moses Kuria at the celebrations on Parliament grounds after Mwangaza’s acquittal probably let the cat out of the bag on the identities of the shadowy power brokers making the moves on either side. It is safe to say that the premier players who wanted Mwangaza impeached should have done better in persuading Senators. Ultimately, the humiliation and sexism the Governor was put through only helped to win her sympathy across the land, which then means that the chances of the MCAs having their way will be dwindling with their next attempt.
It is, however, important to draw lessons from the attempt to topple Governor Mwangaza. The first one is that toxic politics somehow always reigns only for a little while before its underlying vanity is exposed. And truth be told, a guitar-playing husband, singing Wenye Wivu Wajinyonge (Haters be Damned) or naming a road after the spouse, do not seem strong enough reason to want a public administrator out of office. After all, we live in a country where incumbent leaders have named all sorts of things after themselves.
The second lesson is that service delivery always suffers during these processes. An impeachment is a divisive undertaking usually preceded by rhetoric, some in the extreme form presented during cross-examination in the Senate. While the county assembly and the governor are usually engaged in this, the residents are practically left to their own devices, even though they are the mandate-givers in the whole matter. It is imperative in view of this, that the Senate should not just reprimand county assemblies for sending it frivolous impeachment motions but should also go ahead and tighten the laws on evidence and raise the threshold of impeachment to contain vindictive county assemblies that paralyse the operations of county governments using impeachment threats.
Be that as it may, we must be alive to the prevailing view across board that Governor Kawira Mwangaza was mistreated because of her gender. And this is an important conversation to have. Let me revisit the memoirs of legendary leader Phoebe Asiyo, the former Karachuonyo MP. She captures the dreams and ambitions of Kenya’s pioneer leaders when she narrates an incident in which she and other women leaders visited founding father Jomo Kenyatta, just before Independence to lobby for 50-50 gender parity in the soon-to-be-formed government.
Well, it never quite went according to plan, but this ambition over sixty years ago shows how long ago the equality principle was conceived. I am sure that this group of pioneer women achievers wouldn’t countenance a woman leader in this country being hounded out of office merely over her gender. There are certainly strides to be made, as the number of women governors appear to rise with each general election, but the country has to guard against the retrogressive forces that drag it back.
Travelling across the country, one would be forgiven for imagining that the next election is around the corner. Indeed, none other than Azimio boss, Raila Odinga, angrily reprimanded elected leaders within his Nyanza support base this past weekend for spending too much time campaigning to unseat other leaders who are just one year into their current terms. It is the same across the country. Scheming and plotting to remove incumbents from office prematurely is in high gear, a reality across all elective seats in the nation.
It is possible that many foot soldiers in this nationwide endeavour have no idea what final game plan is in each case, beyond the assurance by either the highest bidders or the big bosses directing the moves that it is within their community’s interests. After all, most impeachments are processes that wouldn’t go far without good funding and high-level patronage. And a governor is surely no small person on the political chess board. A removal at this level is obviously sanctioned at a higher political level.
But the message from across the land has to be that we as a nation are going through difficult times trying to make it through each day or to afford a meal. Our elected leaders have bigger fish to fry, in the form of collectively seeking solutions to biting poverty and the rising cost of living.
In this scenario, the ordinary citizen is too weary to be put through bouts of retrogressive political stalemates. At any rate, the hope for all of us was and remains that devolution can work. Drafters of the Constitution, in creating devolution, hoped that we wouldn’t devolve the bad manners and political witch hunt from the national platform to our villages. If we need retraining and a cultural renaissance for politicians stuck in the Neanderthal era, we might even pay for it, to save devolution!
The writer is a political commentator