On Tuesday, after a day of street protests
 |
| @iGaddo cartoon in the Nation |
and online petitions by Kenyans, upset over yet another initiative by members of Kenya’s parliamentarians (MP’s or MPigs – as they were called in the street) to raise their salaries, President Mwai Kibaki announced that he would not sign a bill into law and thus appearing to halt their greedy March.@Mzalendowatch has the hansard (transcript) of the debate on the fateful night that the salary increase was discussed, and while there was a lively debate with lots of MP’s contributing on matters like hides & skins, capital gains tax on land & shares, reopening Charterhouse Bank mining rights, and capping bank interest rates – on the subject of their salaries, no questions were asked on the complex motion which seems to imply that it had been agreed on to pass without much fanfare.
 |
| Kenyan leaders are overpaid |
Turnover: These are interesting times in politics, and with Kenya’s 10thparliament in its’ last few months, there appears to be in a grab & go mentality, given that many won’t be back in parliament. In the last election in 2007, about 70% of MP’s lost their seats, and with next year having the first election under a new constitution, many current MP’s are gunning for other newly created seats such as senators and governors.
Despite their high salaries, many MP’s have a track record of not managing their salaries well hence the push for a bonus send-off.
Performance Review: How can we judge how MP’s have performed over the last few years? There’s Mzalendo who have tracked key issues in parliament (publishing bills & hansards) and also rate all the current MP’s as either bad, average, or good for their online constituents to judge.
Also, the Data Science blog came up with a performance with a scorecard using recently available constituency data to determine how much value some MP’s who led the controversial have actually performed for their constituents.
Debate Season: The BBC are in Nairobi shooting a month-long series of shows in Kenya including Hardtalk with leading Kenyan politicians and pieces on mobile communications and Lamu.
 |
| BBC Hardtalk anchor gets grilled in Nairobi |
And yesterday, Kenya’s media owners announced that they would jointly produce and broadcast a series of U.S style presidential debates in the coming months.
So how will the presidential candidates perform in a debate? The APSEA blog analyzed the communication styles of three of the likely contenders – Musalia Mudavadi, Uhuru Kenyatta and Kalonzo Musyoka (who’s the current Vice President) and who are all likely to be on the debate stage in from November with some interesting findings.
