How New Technology is Exposing Lazy MPs

The Standard | Tue, 02/18/2014

Many Members of Parliament risk losing their seats if the data captured by the new biometric technology now in operation is used to expose and punish truants. The new system went into operation in the National Assembly last Tuesday, but the one for the Senate is still in the pipeline and will have the same effect when rolled out. But it is not just that the presence and absence of the 349 Members of Parliament and 67 senators can be monitored technologically. Many of them are seemingly unaware of a crucial amendment to the House rules that make it easy for them to be sent home on grounds of truancy.
National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi acknowledged the extent of the problem, saying he was aware some MPs have been absent from the House without his permission.

“Some legislators are always absent but the Speaker is not informed yet the law requires written permission. We will simply implement the law as these biometrics will help us crack down on the violators,” Muturi told The Standard.

In the past, MPs would lose their seats if found to have missed six successive sittings without the permission of the Speaker, but the word “consecutive” was deleted in the new regulations. This means that missing just eight sittings over a period of time puts one on the threshold of removal.
TECHNICAL APPEARANCES
The new technology has made it easy to track the number of sittings MPs attend in a given period. Worse still for the MPs, in the past they could just make technical appearances or let friendly clerks sign the attendance registers for them – at a fee, of course. That way, they would earn allowances they did not work for. But with the biometric system, this is now out of question.
The National Assembly recently installed biometric registration of MPs to help enforce the provision that will see vacancies declared.
MPs have been warned that the Constitution provides for members who skip eight sittings in a session without the Speaker’s permission to be stripped of their seats.
This is unlike the old Constitution, repealed in 2010, that required absence on eight consecutive days, which meant as long as an MP avoided an uninterrupted absence, their seat was safe.
Under the new provision, an MP could easily lose a seat if they are absent for different days spread over the period of, for instance, the last session that lasted from March to December.
To monitor attendance effectively, the National Assembly installed the new biometric system to register MPs every day as they get into the debating chamber.
The system became effective last Tuesday when the National Assembly reopened for the second session of the 11th Parliament.
Speaker Muturi explained it would run simultaneously with the manual register for a week to enable the fingerprints of all MPs to be captured digitally.
Although initially embraced by MPs who have been lamenting that registering manually is time wasting, the electronic system is now a double-edged sword that could see the tenure of some prematurely terminated.
Article 103(1) of the Constitution stipulates: “The office of a Member of Parliament becomes vacant — (b) if, during any session of Parliament, the member is absent from eight sittings of the relevant House without permission, in writing, from the Speaker, and is unable to offer a satisfactory explanation for the absence to the relevant committee.”
However, the repealed Constitution stated: “A member of the National Assembly shall vacate his seat without having obtained the permission of the Speaker if he has failed to attend the Assembly on eight consecutive days on which the Assembly was sitting in any session.”
The old Constitution also gave the President powers to protect a member from being sacked, despite his or her absence. It provided that “the President may in any case if he thinks fit direct that a member shall not vacate his seat by reason of his failure so to attend the Assembly.”
UNAVAILABLE SAFEGUARD
That safeguard is no longer available as the powers of the President were whittled down substantially to restore the independence of Parliament. In any case, the President and Deputy President are no longer Members of Parliament.
On Monday, Muturi said biometric technology would help him check who among the members have been skipping House sessions without his consent.
“All I need to do is to check at the end of the session who among the members has violated this provision and declare the seat vacant,” Muturi added.
The MPs were given until last week to have their details captured in the biometric system, so that they would just have to press a finger to the biometric reader and have their presence automatically registered.
Some MPs, The Standard has learnt, come to the House on Tuesday, register their presence and disappear only to return the next week.
This means that such MPs skip two days a week, which translates to eight days a month if the House sits over four weeks.
It is such MPs who have failed to notify the Speaker whenever they are not going to be in the House, leading to the persistent quorum hitches and general low attendance even when the quorum threshold is met.
The biometric system would be for registration only as the MPs would still have to use their electronic cards to notify the Speaker that they wish to contribute to debate in the House.