NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 9 – Kapseret Member of Parliament Oscar Sudi and his Makadara counterpart George Aladwa are among 19 legislators who have not contributed to parliamentary debates in the past year despite attending plenary sessions.
According to the Mzalendo 2024 Parliamentary Scorecard, the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party led with 10 MPs who are silent while ODM had four members, ANC two, Wiper had one, DAP-K one and Jubilee party one.
“Upon collation of all the Hansards for a particular session a calendar year from February to December-the speech counts for each member are generated by Mzalendo’s word-scraper which captures the speech frequencies based on the Hansard entries,” the report stated.
The report listed active legislators like Funyula MP Wilberforce Oundo and Dagoretti North’s Beatrice Elachi, who each made over 100 contributions.
The number of times individual MPs speak in Parliament (speech counts) exclusively determined the performance, as captured in the Parliamentary Hansard, the official Parliamentary record.
The rankings cover only plenary proceedings, whose information is readily available to the public.
“Information on committees’ proceedings is not as readily available. The limited access thus makes it hard to incorporate them into the rankings,” Mzalendo stated in its report.
The report adds that Parliament has adjourned 66 times for lack of quorum amid raising concerns of MPs becoming unresponsive and insensitive to the issues and concerns of Kenyans.
The National Assembly has adjourned 40 times while the Senate did 26 times for lack of required numbers.
“In the National Assembly, since August 2023, 40 sittings out of 158 were adjourned due to lack of quorum, which translates to 25 per cent of the total sittings,” the report states.
The report further states that two sittings didn’t happen at all, with one being the morning after a vote on the impeachment of the former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.
Mzalendo adds that the instances where the sittings did not happen were on days when critical issues were to be discussed.
The report states Kenyans’ input in the passage of crucial bills and motions has been disregarded by the MPs, triggering a disconnect between Kenyans’ needs and MPs.
The report states that Public Participation in the process of enactment of legislation continues to be a challenge, with Kenyans complaining of inadequate notice and time, inaccessibility to documents and relevant information, and prior civic education ahead of the process.
It indicates that only 51 Public Participation calls on different Bills have been made in the National Assembly in the review period.
Some of the bills that had a longer duration of 20 days for Public Participation include;the Affordable Housing Bill, The Basic Education (Amendment) Bill and the National Government Administration Laws, Land Laws (Amendment) Bill and The National Employment Authority (Amendment) Bill.
The impeachment of former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua in the National Assembly had the shortest Public Participation duration of 3 days.
“The 13th Parliament has been no different, with the court having to intervene on numerous occasions to ensure that the constitutional principle is upheld. MPs and the members of the public have seemingly dissenting views on the subject,” read the report.
The report records that the bills that have elicited high citizen interest seemed to attract the lowest participation timelines.
They include the Digital Health Bill, for example, which had a public participation window of three days in the Senate, and the Social Health Insurance Bill had a public participation window of seven days in the National Assembly.
The Parliamentary Scorecard is an annual ranking of performance by the Members of Parliament (MPs)-both the National Assembly and the Senate.
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