Africa-Press – Kenya. There have been nine different attempts to amend the constitution to enforce two-thirds gender representation in Parliament. National Gender Equality Commission (NGEC) Chairperson Dr Joyce Mutinda said that the commission has been following closely the journey of two-thirds.
Speaking during a media engagement forum to discuss the implementation of the rule on Friday, she said the journey began in 2011. “The Commission began to document the attempts at amending the constitution after the 2010 constitution took effect,” she said.
Mutinda recalled that the first attempt was the Mutula Kilonzo bill of 2011 which proposed a gender top-up in Parliament. The bill flopped, she said, but that was the beginning of the fight for two-thirds.
“In 2015, there was the Samuel Chepkonga bill that proposed progressive realisation of the two-thirds rule,” she said. That bill died on the floor of Parliament as well. In 2015 also, the Current CS for Defence Aden Duale proposed one of his first amendments to the two-thirds gender rule.
“He revived the Mutula Kilonzo bill, calling for a gender top-up but did not succeed. Later in the same year, he revived the bill again but it was not successful,” she said.
In 2018, Mutinda said, Duale returned with another proposal for gender top up and again, he was unsuccessful. “I was in Parliament when they were voting for that bill and I was very surprised that it did not gain any substantial amount of traction,” she said.
The same proposal was made in Senate by Senator Judith Biro and Current Embu Governor Cecily Mbarire on separate occasions in 2015. “Current Makueni Governor Mutula Kilonzo Junior, in a joint bill also proposed another amendment in 2017 that was quashed,” she said.
“The final bill was proposed in 2019 by the current Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Gladys Boss Shollei,” she said. It proposed the review of constituencies and ward boundaries and clustering of adjacent constituencies to elect women Members of Parliament.
“The Shollei bill was different from the others so we thought it would be the chosen one to raise the number of women in Parliament,” she said.
She said the 10th Parliament, 11th and 12th have not been able to have the two-thirds gender rule implemented. “We are looking to the 13th Parliament now,” she said.
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