“I’ve always operated under an illusion that our female colleagues carry greater levels of decency than the male ones,” stated National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetangula during Agriculture CS Mithika Linturi’s impeachment debate on Thursday.
“Today, it appears to be the total opposite. Your own children are watching you live, your husbands are watching you live. If you continue behaving like that, it is most unfortunate,” he added.
This he said following a chant by MPs “Linturi must go! Linturi must go! It is of the essence to note that the chanting MPs were both male and female.
This discriminatory statement reminded me of an excerpt from award winning Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi’s book, ‘We Should All Be Feminists’
“We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likable. We spend too much time telling girls that you cannot be angry or aggressive or tough, which is bad enough, but then we turn around and either praise or excuse men for the same reasons.”
As I was following the procedure, I hoped a member would raise a point of order and probe Mr Wetangula’s basis for reading the riot act to female parliamentarians and excusing the same of their male counterparts.
I strongly believe that if you criticize something in women and fail to fault the same in men then you have a problem with women and not that thing.
Speaker Wetangula who is a lawyer by profession is certainly familiar with Section 27 (4) of the Constitution which states that no one shall be discriminated directly or indirectly against any person on any ground including race, sex, pregnancy, marital status, health status, ethnic or social origin, colour, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, dress, language or birth.
As I conclude Mr Speaker sir, I urge you to hold female MPs to the same moral ground you do their male counterparts.
