On Thursday, an MP made public the start of a process they hope will lead to the removal of SRC commissioners, angered by the slashing of their pay from Sh850,000 to Sh532,000.
But The Standard also learnt of at least three other underhand plots the lawmakers are secretly planning to force the Executive to implement salary hikes.
Lawmakers are contemplating exploiting their Budget approval powers to cripple the activities of the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) by denying it sufficient funding.
Sources said the sanction could also be extended to other select key institutions to provide the MPs with leverage.
The Government is required to submit the Budget for the new financial year to Parliament by April 30. MPs intend to abuse the new constitutional order that grants Parliament the powers to review budgetary allocations for various ministries, departments and institutions.
The third option MPs are reportedly toying with targets the Value Added Tax Bill, which details new taxation measures to raise additional revenue.
It largely aims to reform the legal framework governing administration and enforcement of the VAT regime, hence its importance to the Government.
The Bill seeks to abolish VAT exemption and zero-rating of agricultural and food items so that they can attract 16 per cent VAT.
Tax reforms
Kenya Revenue Authority has estimated it could raise Sh11 billion through the tax reforms detailed in the Bill, which lapsed in the last Parliament and is scheduled for re-introduction in the current House.
MPs plan to reinstate the tax exemptions, not for the love of Kenyans, but to hit back at the Government.
They reckon that frustrating the Bill intended to raise more revenue will hurt President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration’s ambitious projects requiring massive funding.
Apparently, the new MPs intend to play a game their predecessors in the 10th Parliament perfected to reap concessions: hold the Government hostage on crucial business in the House to force the Executive to give in.
That is what the last Parliament did with the Finance Bill, which they stalled in the House until the Government offered the MPs a tidy Sh3.7 million each as a gratuity, more than double the then severance pay.
On Thursday, Igembe South National Assembly Member Mithika Linturi announced that he had filed a petition with the Clerk of the National Assembly for the removal of all the 13 members of the salaries commission led by chairperson Sarah Serem
The petition is the first step stipulated in the rigorous process set for removing any constitutional office holder by the Constitution.
Linturi said the law sets the conditions under which a constitutional office holder may be removed.
Article 251 of the Constitution states that such an officer can only be removed from office on grounds of serious violation of the Constitution, gross misconduct in performance, physical or mental incapacity, incompetency and bankruptcy.
In his petition, Linturi said that Serem and his commissioners have violated, infringed on, breached and threatened the Constitution.
“The Commission has treated members of the National Assembly in a degrading and discriminatory manner contrary to Article 27 and 29 of the Constitution,” he says in his petition.
The petition will now go through the due process, with the National Assembly first required to consider if it is satisfied that it discloses sufficient ground, before sending the same to the President.
On receiving the petition from Parliament, the President is expected to suspend the commissioners and appoint a tribunal headed by a superior judge to investigate expeditiously, report facts and make a binding recommendation.
If the grounds raised in the petition were proven, the President would then have to act within 30 days.
new perks
Linturi claimed that they want the commissioners removed because they did not follow the law in setting up the salaries, when they reduced MPs’ pay.
“I do not have a problem with the commission. I am aware that the SRC has a mandate to set salaries, but even with these powers, they should have followed the law by ensuring that they look at all the previous reports and Acts of Parliament,” said Linturi.
He said the Commission did not engage any stakeholder from Parliament as it only gazetted the new pay perks in February, when the candidates had resigned from their jobs and were busy campaigning.
The petition states: “The commission disregarded the principle of transparency and fairness. The commission discriminated against members of the National Assembly, County Representatives and Governors.”
He argues that the Serem-led commission should have looked at other past reports, including the Cockar and the Akiwumi reports that called for an increment of their salaries.
It should also have considered amendments to the Pension Act, National Assembly Remuneration Act, the Parliamentary Service Commission Act and the Appropriation Act to conform to the new salaries, he noted.
On the floor of the House yesterday, MPs continued raging against the SRC over the salaries, which they described as meagre and insufficient to sustain their lifestyles.
Rongo MP Dalmas Otieno dismissed members of the commission as pretending to be salary experts.
Otieno, a former Public Services minister, said that the commission did not conduct any job evaluation in determining MPs’ pay, as they were “pretending to have done”.
“The commission did not do any evaluation. Instead it only divided the cumulative sum of what the MPs in the Tenth Parliament were earning to the current added number of MPs, then somebody comes pretending that they did a job evaluation. By who?” he posed sarcastically.
“Members are now being subjected to extreme humiliation, extreme ridicule, then someone comes talking as if she has become a salary expert,” he added.
“If our affairs are not taken care of, then you can rest assured that corruption is going to creep into the House,” said Kangundo MP Maweu Katatha.
Bomachoge Borabu MP Joel Onyancha accused the SRC of acting with vendetta.
“As a result of the vendetta, the public now vilifies us all as thieves and people who do not deserve better remuneration. It is such an irony that the chairperson (of SRC) was keen on slashing salaries of MPs but silently increased hers by close to Sh600,000,” said Onyancha.
However, The Standard has established that Serem’s salary was in fact increased after the harmonisation of salaries of chairpersons of independent constitutional commissions.
- The Standard
