MPs alter law to allow more time for defections

MPs have successfully amended the Elections Act to allow them get 15 more days to decide on the parties they will use to contest for seats in the next elections.

The House amended the law to make the day that political parties are expected to submit the membership list to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to be the same day that the candidates will present their papers to the commission.

“A political party that nominates a person for any election under this Act shall submit to the Commission a party membership list of the party at least 45 days before the date of the general election,” section 29 of the amended Elections Act now reads.

But the amendment will only become active once President Kibaki signs it into law.

The change of date puts pressure on the IEBC to verify the party lists and to also okay the candidates who will appear on the over 100 million ballot papers to be used in the next polls.

IEBC had hoped to use the 15 days to verify the names before accepting papers from the candidates after the primaries, but now, it will all happen on the same day, and verification may not be done.

The amendment also ensures that the Tenth Parliament will continue to sit until the expiry of its five-year term on January 14, 2013.

The law as it is right now requires that this be done at least 60 days to the election date.

That had put the final date of nomination to January 4, 2013, now that Kenya’s General Election will be held on March 4, 2013.

Speaker Kenneth Marende had been apprehensive that the House might hit a legal wall if the January 4 deadline –60 days to elections—had remained in the statute.

Mr Marende had already warned MPs that their term in the House would be untenable, because, it was expected that many of them who had already changed parties would not be eligible to sit in the House, having formally quit the parties that sponsored them to Parliament in the first place.

Attorney General Githu Muigai said he had brought the amendment to make it “congruent” with the day that candidates will submit their nomination papers to the IEBC.

The change was introduced as part of the Omnibus Bill –the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendment) Bill, 2012.

After the amendment sailed through, MPs were heard within the corridors of the House celebrating that they will earn their pay until January 14, 2013 and that they will also sit in committees and make a few thousand shillings in sitting allowances. MPs make Sh5,000 per sitting.

ODM Chief Whip Jakoyo Midiwo had proposed a ten-day extension, but when the AG sought to move the deadline for the primaries and submission of papers to January 18, 2012, Mr Midiwo dropped his amendments.

The ODM Chief Whip said the AG had taken care of his concerns.

The amendment comes at a time when the House is in a last-minute rush to approve Bills to do with the allocation of revenue to the 47 counties, and also at a time when it wants to approve the Supplementary Budget for money to run the government until June 30 next year. The Supplementary Budget was tabled.

The 15 days that the AG’s amendment gives the MPs may mean nothing to most of them because for the past month, only less than 35 have been attending parliamentary sessions at a time.

Last week, even with the heavy legislative agenda, the lawmakers failed to transact business because they could not raise the requisite quorum of 30 MPs.

Most of them have changed parties, with some quitting the Orange Democratic Movement for the United Republican Party and the United Democratic Front; while others have quit Party of National Unity for The National Alliance Party.