Over the last few days, Kenyans have witnessed a new face of Parliament. For years, our legislators thrived in a culture where money exchanged hands in the name of development, and the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) was the central tool of patronage. Suddenly, that comfort zone is being threatened. The calls to end transactional politics and abolish CDF have unsettled MPs so deeply that they now appear ready to summon everyone and declare war against all arms of government.
This discomfort is healthy. It exposes the reality that without CDF, Members of Parliament must rediscover their true constitutional role: oversight, legislation, and representation.
Gone are the days when they could walk into villages distributing bursaries and claiming development projects as personal donations. If they can no longer use CDF to entrench themselves, then their only survival strategy is to fight, fight governors, fight cabinet secretaries, and perhaps even challenge the presidency itself. And that, ironically, is exactly what Kenya has always needed, a Parliament that bites.
With Parliament forced back to its original role, the results could be revolutionary. Governors would finally feel the sharp teeth of oversight. No county boss would dare steal public resources with the same impunity we have seen over the last decade.
Each of them would know that a vigilant Parliament, starved of CDF, is watching and waiting to pounce. Likewise, no cabinet secretary or senior bureaucrat in the executive would escape scrutiny. Suddenly, the culture of accountability would no longer be a matter of choice but of survival.
This shift has the potential to rebalance the entire architecture of governance. For too long, Parliament has been compromised by the allure of handouts and the easy politics of CDF. That culture transformed our MPs into development contractors instead of watchdogs of public interest. Meanwhile, governors mismanaged billions, the executive stretched its powers unchecked, and citizens were left helpless. Now, without CDF, MPs must reinvent themselves as true representatives of the people.
We are, in fact, living in promising times. For once, institutions are at war with each other not in the destructive sense, but in a battle over accountability and control of public resources. This war could force transparency into the bloodstream of government.
It could compel governors to deliver genuine services to counties. It could pressure the executive to justify its actions openly. And it could remind MPs that their real power lies not in cutting ribbon on classrooms built by CDF, but in exposing corruption and demanding answers on the floor of the House.
Imagine, for instance, a scenario where the President himself is summoned to Parliament to answer questions about government policy, expenditure, and priorities. That is not a far fetched dream, it is the natural next step when transactional politics is stripped away. The President would have to face the people’s representatives, just as governors face county assemblies. That level of accountability would mark a new chapter in Kenya’s democratic journey.
This is why the current discomfort in Parliament should be welcomed, not resisted. If losing CDF means gaining a Parliament that bites, then Kenya is on the right path. History will record this as the moment when MPs stopped being contractors and returned to being custodians of accountability.
What a great time to live in.
