Crucial Bills pending as MPs take rest

Members of Parliament took an abrupt break on Thursday with lots of unfinished business still on their to-do list. The House is set to resume on April 17, only 10 days before the expiry of the extended deadline given to the three Bills meant to usher in land reforms.

The recess is to compensate for the interruption of the lawmakers’ Christmas break. According to the legislative calendar, the House was to convene in March, but because of pending constitutional Bills that faced a February 27 deadline, they resumed business on February 14.

The recess coincides with county hearings conducted by the Land and Natural Resources Committee on the National Land Commission Bill, the Land Bill and the Land Registration Bill.

According to the chairman of the House committee, Mr Mutava Musyimi, the MPs had to go out and involve the public in the legislative process “because land is a very critical resource”.

Mr Musyimi urged all interest groups to turn out and raise any issues with the Bills within the set time. The 11-member committee has split into four panels: three with three MPs each, and one with two MPs.

The hearings will begin on Monday with simultaneous hearings in Wajir, Machakos and Lodwar. The panels will then move across the counties to 20 selected venues.

The final hearings covering Nairobi, Kiambu and Kajiado counties will be held on March 27 at County Hall in Nairobi.

“Everybody has the chance to come and present their memoranda to the committee. They can also email the memos to the clerk of the National Assembly. We don’t want anyone to say they were left out,” Mr Musyimi told the Sunday Nation.

The National Land Commission Bill and the Land Registration Bill have been debated and are awaiting amendments before being sent to the President for assent. The Land Bill is yet to be debated.

The deadline for the enactment of these Bills is April 26, by which date the House is supposed to have debated and amended the Bills, taking on board public sentiment and submitted the Bills to the President for assent.

But it is not just matters of land that have been put on ice in the House. The County Governments Bill, the mother Bill that will regulate the setting up of devolved units, is pending because of a legal tiff between the President and the National Assembly regarding the legality of placing the provincial administrators within the ambit of the governor.

A Speaker’s ruling on the admissibility of the memorandum is pending in the House. There’s also the Public Financial Management Bill to guide spending by national and county governments on which MPs are yet to conclude debate.

Although the Bill is quite important, MPs have shown considerable apathy about debating it.

Adjournment Motion

“We hope to use this time to prepare for the Bills which are coming up,” said the acting chairman of the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee, Mr Njoroge Baiya.

He also asked Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka to expedite the re-submission of fresh nominees to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, after his committee rejected the earlier set of nominees – Mr Mumo Matemu, Ms Irene Keino and Prof Jane Onsongo – for their “lack of passion, drive and interest” to lead the corruption war.

He also asked Attorney-General Githu Muigai to push for the amendment of the Political Parties Act so a substantive registrar of political parties can be named.

The MPs declined to approve a selection panel to choose the registrar, saying the timelines established in the Act had expired.

There are also queries about the finance Bill, 2011, which would legalise the collection of taxes. The Bill was put on ice for the second time after MPs turned up in Parliament in droves, seeking to back an amendment to cap interest rates at no more than four per cent above the CBK base rate.

The mastermind of the amendment, Mr Jakoyo Midiwo (Gem), is hopeful that by the time the lawmakers conclude the recess, the ongoing talks among banks, MPs and the Treasury regarding the current high interest rates of around 30 per cent will have been dealt with.

Acting Finance minister Njeru Githae is also a man whose ministry will have the most work when the House resumes.

He will be required to table a national budget within 13 days of the resumption of the sittings. The Constitution prescribes that the estimates have to be with MPs two months before the end of the financial year on June 30.

But before that, Mr Githae, will have to table the Budget Policy Statement – a three-year economic forecast and financial plan for the government – in the House on the day the House resumes, seeing that the deadline of March 21 is untenable.

The Constitution gives Parliament the power to prepare the national budget, but like last year, the Treasury seems ready to wrest this power from the lawmakers.