How US trip brought peace to Kenyan Parliament - Francis Ole Kaparo recounts

Former National Assembly Speaker Francis Ole Kaparo has disclosed how a foreign trip organized for a few Members of Parliament from both sides of the divide in 1993 brought about the presently existing unity and interaction during a dark time of division and intense hostility.

Speaking on Citizen TV’s JKLive Show on Wednesday night, Ole Kaparo ran down memory lane to a time shortly after he took over as Speaker of the House, when a major rift existed between MPs allied to the government and their counterparts in the opposition.

Ole Kaparo revealed the extent of the beef saying there was practically no interaction between MPs from one side of the divide with their colleagues on the other wing, adding that it was so tense that not even greetings could be exchanged.

He noted that the rivalry had spilled over to the public and one would be assaulted and even lynched for just being spotted in a vehicle branded with Government of Kenya (GK) plates out on the streets.

“I remember those years it was dangerous to ride on a GK vehicle in Nairobi because there were chances you would be lynched and it would burn to ashes. A lot of people were killed, imprisoned, maimed and there was indeed hostility out there in the country in the process of getting into multi-party democracy,” said Ole Kaparo.

“When the House resumed on January 26, 1993, the members of the government side and those of the opposition side would not say hello to one another, let alone sit together, and that situation continued for almost 9 months. When you are in the middle, you are not armed, it was difficult.”

As a solution to the cold shoulders in Parliament, the former Chairperson of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) formulated a plan to restore unity in the House by sending MPs from both sides for a joint benchmarking trip to the United States Congress.

“I had to get the guys to talk to one another; it was bad. I had to break that hostility and I sent the MPs to the US Congress. I got support from the US Parliament and government to send 15 MPs to the US; I sent 8 from the government and 7 from the opposition to reflect the numbers in the House,” he said.

During the trip, Kaparo explained, he had organized with the US government to put together all the legislators under one roof upon their arrival, despite the MPs not uttering a word to each other the entire journey.

He noted that their hard-headedness lasted for about three days after their arrival, but they soon became bored and started engaging with each other.

“When I sent those fellows from Nairobi to London, to Washington they were not talking to one another. Those in KANU spoke to those in KANU and those in opposition to one another and not those in government,” Kaparo stated.

“I had arranged with the US Congress and government that those guys should not be put in a hotel; they should get a house of their own where they were the only ones there; the only non-Kenyans would be the fellows working for them; those who would clean, make food for them…but they were all there together to the exclusion of others.”

He added: “For three other days, they were not talking to each other but on the fourth and fifth day, they missed talking to somebody else and began talking to one another.”

The ex-Speaker went on to point out that the MPs were forced to spend another 10 days under the same roof in the US until the one-time foes became allies.

On coming back home, he said, the lawmakers brought with them their newfound bromance and soon thereafter replicated it on the whole House and sanity was finally restored.

“We kept them for another 10 days…after that, they talked all the way from Washington to Nairobi and into the proceedings of Parliament and infected the House with the disease of talking to one another. Gradually we became a working Parliament,” added Kaparo, who is Kenya’s longest serving Speaker.