BLOG: House got it wrong on "special sitting"

Call it by any other name, but Tuesday’s ceremony at Parliament had all the elements of a State Opening as inherited from the English Parliament.

Though the big shots at Parliament would want everyone to believe that it was just a “continuation” of the Fourth Session, and not a ‘State Opening’ per se, the Commonwealth tradition records that this is just semantics.

The fact is, the Fourth Session ended with the indefinite adjournment of the House shortly before Christmas. A Special Sitting --specifically called to approve the Judicial Service Bill and the Vetting of Judges and Magistrates Bill-- followed on January 19, but it was interrupted briefly, before the House reconvened on February 1 to pass those two bills.

One month later, the two Bills were passed, and there being no other business, the MPs had to go home.

So, when I looked at Tuesday’s programme labelling the simple resumption of legislative business as a “Special Sitting of Parliament”, I was a little perturbed.

In my view, the “special” nature of the sitting is in the basic fact that it is House Speaker Kenneth Marende, who summoned MPs back from their recess.

This was occasioned by a drafting oversight by the now defunct Committee of Experts when it retained the President’s powers to summon the House, but then quashed his powers to prorogue a session (parliamentary year) and to dissolve Parliament.

I think the dilemma was in explaining to the public in simple language that Kenya’s Parliament was setting a precedent for the Commonwealth. That, with the new Constitution, was now in charge of its “sessions” and now, like more independent legislatures in other jurisdictions, it was beginning its parliamentary year.

They’d just have said there would be a State Opening, because there was one, and should have spared us the little bibble-babble about Tuesday’s re-opening being just a “continuation of the Fourth Session.”

If they’d done that, they wouldn’t have had the difficulty of explaining to everyone why the “State” was in charge of Parliament’s business on Tuesday afternoon.

For starters, a State Opening is that grand and lavish occasion where the Head of State, in our case the President and in the UK, the Queen, has the chance to spell out to the legislature the government’s agenda in a parliamentary year. It is also a time to review the previous session and set out new policies for the coming year.

President Kibaki did just that on Tuesday!

There was the procession of religious leaders, judges, the commanders of disciplined forces, ambassadors, other government big shots all coming to Parliament. That’s what has always happened in the State Openings and still happens in most Commonwealth jurisdictions.

And by the way, according to the programme even the First Lady was expected in Parliament, but she didn’t show up. Her seat was reserved at the Speaker’s Gallery.

The President did occupy the Speaker’s chair and made his address to Parliament. Then the Leader of Government Business, Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka tabled that speech in Parliament for MPs to debate in the next four days, just as prescribed under Standing Order 18.

Now, anyone who’s been keen about Kenya’s Parliament will note that Parliament has always debated the President’s Speech for a mandatory four days. Previously, before the revision of the Standing Orders, MPs spent a whole seven days “ventilating” on the President’s Speech.

Before that, journalists had seen tough times with the security checks prior to the ceremony, never mind that they had gone over the arrangements with the elite presidential security a day before.

The hassle of getting into the Press Gallery persisted --the body searches, the double-checks on the IDs, and then being squeezed into the Press Gallery so that no one sat directly above the President. It was hectic. A parliament official was particularly piqued that despite his efforts to ensure that everything went smoothly, he had been shunted aside when the D-Day arrived.

But then this is the President, so that should be expected. No “outsider” can be allowed to mess with his security --whether or not you pose a security threat.

With that, it is my conclusion that Tuesday’s ceremony was a State Opening, and that it was just a reminder that we are still in the transition stage in the rollout of the new Constitution.

I’d love to see if the same is repeated annually after 2012 elections, that’s if, we’re going to take the English tradition where the Head of State will address the two chambers of Parliament.

I’d also be interested to see if we go the US way and have something akin to the “State of the Union address” --where the President will address the House every year.

My reading of article 132(1) of the Constitution is that, post-2012, we’ll have a mishmash of the US and UK traditions, where he’ll address each new Parliament and address the House once every year or at “any other time”. But I am not the Supreme Court, so let’s wait and see how that pans out.