Parliament invites views on election date bill
Parliament has called on Kenyans to give their views on the Bill seeking to change the election date currently awaiting debate in the August House.
The Clerk of the National Assembly, Mr Patrick Gichohi, on Tuesday called on the public to send in their memoranda on what they think about the Bill, which also seeks to find a mechanism of rolling out the two-thirds gender cap for the next Parliament.
“It is a requirement under the Constitution that Parliament ought to facilitate public discussion about any Bill to amend the Constitution. That has to be done before the Bill comes to the House for debate,” Mr Gichohi told the Nation.
“We want the public to State their position on the proposals in the Bill.”
He added that the motive of the public hearings, to be carried out in eight regions –the current provincial headquarters—,was to ensure that the MPs are made aware of what the public thinks about the Cabinet-sponsored amendment.
The call for public hearings comes just a day after the Court of Appeal picked February 21 as the date when they’d rule on the High Court ruling that determined the date of the next General Election to be later this year subject to the dissolution of the coalition government; or within 60 days of the expiry of the term of the Tenth Parliament in January 15, 2013.
The Bill wants the date of the next General Election designated as December 17, 2012 and that of the subsequent polls to be moved from “the second Tuesday in August” as stipulated in the Constitution, to the “third Monday in December” in every fifth year.
On Tuesday, Mr Gichohi put an advertisement in the dailies picking Garissa, Mombasa, Nyeri, Embu, Nakuru, Kisumu, Kakamega and Nairobi as centres for public hearings.
The advert provided just one day –Thursday, February 16, 2012—as the date when the public will get to air their views on the Bill in all the regions except Nairobi.
Nairobi residents will have to wait until Tuesday February 21, 2012 –the day when the Court of Appeal makes its finding on the election date-- to give their views on the Bills at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre.
The call for public discussion on the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill also comes within days of the expiry of the legal deadline by which the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has to submit its report on the 80 new constituencies and the new boundaries for all the 290 constituencies in the country to the House.
The delimitation of boundaries is also part of the Bill because the Bill proposes that the new electoral zones will take effect “for the purposes of the Constitution.”
The amendment is necessary, because of a drafting inconsistency in the Constitution, which sought to have the new units take effect as soon as Parliament is dissolved. However, the same Constitution did not provide for the dissolution of Parliament.
Mr Gichohi said the submissions will be compiled by the Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee into a report, which will then be submitted to the House for adoption, before the debate begins.
However, there are plenty of doubts about the impact such attempts at public participation will have in the House given that there’s no recorded history in Kenya’s Parliament of a Bill seeking to amend the Constitution being amended in the House. As such, the Bills are either approved or rejected in toto.
“The members can amend the Bill at committee stage, but procedurally, it requires 65 per cent of the House to amend a clause in the Bill. That’s why it has been difficult,” said Mr Gichohi.
Justice Minister Mutula Kilonzo has held that he won’t withdraw the Bill from the House. He’s also said that he won’t separate the issue to do with elections from the proposals on gender, because, they all related to the elections and the election date.
The CIOC has rejected the amendment to alter the election date and pushed for a December date. It has also recommended that the Bill be withdrawn and a fresh one tackling only the gender quagmire be introduced in the House.
