Kenya: President Kibaki Rejects MPs’ Bonus Plan

Nairobi---Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki has rejected a proposal to award Members of Parliament a hefty send-off bonus of $110,000 each as the assembly nears close ahead of general elections due in March next year.
The Kenyan lawmakers with a tax-free monthly salary of about $ 10,000 are already among the highly paid in the continent. Now the MPs had agree to pay themselves severance allowance that would have cost the country $24.7 million, with money expected from tax increases.

Last Thursday the MPs introduced a last-minute amendment to the Finance Act 2012 which would have seen each of the 222 members and the assembly speaker get $110,800 as send off package at the end of their current term.

Late on Tuesday, President Kibaki rejected the proposal saying the bonuses were unconstitutional and unaffordable given the country’s financial situation.

“The President objected to the amendment on the grounds that it was first, unconstitutional and second, untenable in the prevailing economic circumstances in the country,” a statement
from the  President’s office said.

The statement said that the huge payout to the MPs would compel the government to forfeit other compelling matters, coming shortly after the pay rise for teachers and doctors after weeks
of strike. Kenya has seen a string of strikes in the public sector in the past month over wage increase and condition blamed on the government’s selective approach to award pay hikes to civil
servants.

The attempt has sparked a spate of angry protests and wide condemnations against the “greedy hyenas.” Rights groups including Transparency International and the Kenyan Human Rights Commission issued a statement on Tuesday describing the bonus move as “extremely disturbing”.

"How come our teachers had to strike for three weeks to get a salary hike, yet within a single sitting the
MPs could easily increase their remuneration?" said Morris Odhiambo, one of the protester who had marched through streets of the capital, Nairobi, and later camped outside parliament buildings.

According to the AFP news agency, someone earning the minimum wage in Kenya would have to work for 61 years to earn the equivalent of an MP's proposed bonus.

Kinshasa, DR Congo
Rights Group Calls for End of East DR Congo Violence

Amnesty International has called on the Democratic Republic of Congo government to end the ongoing fighting in the eastern part of the country and bring to account all those involved in committed human rights abuses in the region. The UK-based rights group wants the Congolese government to take urgent steps to halt violence in the eastern region where several local and foreign armed groups are committing abuses against the locals. It also says it’s concerned about the increase of ethnic-related
violence in the region.

Amnesty International whose delegation has recently returned from Eastern DRC says it documented cases of rape, summary killings, forceful enlisting of civilians including children, pillaging and illegal taxing by armed groups plying the area.

“Human rights abuses continue unabated and with total impunity,” says Audrey Gaughran, Amnesty International’s Africa Director. The call comes ahead of the two-day Francophone Summit, in the capital, Kinshasa beginning in October 12, where the rights group has urged the biennial gathering of French speaking nations to engage the DRC government to end and account for the violence.

“The leaders of Francophone nations are assembling in a country where there are daily reports of egregious abuses. They cannot ignore the context in which this major summit is taking place", said Audrey Gaughran. A statement by the group urged member states ensure that numerous violations of the values and principles stated in the Francophone Charter and the Bamako Declaration, are condemned in the strongest possible terms.

Since fighting began in April between the Congolese army and the M23 rebelsin Northern Kivu Province in eastern DRC, over 226,000 people have been displaced, where 60,000 have fled into neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda.

Renegade soldiers mainly of Congolese Tutsis under Col Bosco Ntaganda deserted their ranks in the Congolese national FARDC army earlier in April over failure by the government to honour the March 23 2009 peace deal that ended rebellions in the province and saw them integrated into
the army. Between May and September 2012, the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR), the Nyatura and Raia Mutomboki armed groups in Masisi territory specifically targeted civilians who belonged or who were believed to belong to certain ethnic groups.
The eastern DR Congo conflict is said to be a spill over from the 1994 Rwandan genocide where Congolese Tutsi rebels are reportedly armed by the Rwandan government officials to fight Rwandan Hutu rebels in Congo.