Uhuru, Raila parties face funds cut as MPs debate Bill

A Bill that may result in three major political parties ceding part of their funding from taxpayers to smaller parties has been formally introduced in Parliament.

The Political Parties (Amendment) Bill, 2015, sponsored by Kiminini MP Chris Wamalwa, was read for the first time in the House and handed to the Justice and Legal Affairs committee for scrutiny ahead of debate.

The Bill seeks to amend section 25(2)(b) of the Act to reduce the threshold for a party to access government funding to two per cent of the total votes cast from the current five per cent.

If the amendment is adopted into law, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s The National Alliance (TNA), Deputy President William Ruto’s United Republican Party (URP) and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) will lose out in the next allocations to their parties.

TNA, ODM and URP took majority share of the Sh204 million from the Political Parties Fund.

In the current financial year, TNA was allocated Sh89.3 million, ODM got Sh87.4 million while URP received Sh28.2 million. Under the Act, a political party must garner at least five per cent of the total votes cast to qualify for funding.

The amount a party gets also depends on the total percentage of the votes the party gets for all electable positions.

Smaller parties had gone to court to appeal a ruling that only ensured funding for the big three parties in the country, saying that the smaller parties did not have enough clout and representation in the house to deserve funding.

The Court of Appeal ,however, ruled that the law was clear on terms for the sharing of funds and that only the three big ones deserve funding.