Parliament want ministers picked from among MPs

The next Parliament should consider changing the Constitution so that Cabinet secretaries are appointed from among MPs, the leadership of the National Assembly has resolved.

The House’s threshold for a quorum could also be revised downwards to reduce the current case, where decisions are not made because of MPs missing sittings.

The number of committees in the next National Assembly could also be increased and specialist teams created to handle the Constituency Development, Women, Youth and Uwezo funds and policy formulation, cost reduction strategies and government borrowing.

These are among the resolutions of the last retreat of the National Assembly’s leadership last weekend. Unlike last year, MPs did not touch on the proposed Sh3.3 billion “severance pay”, which the Parliamentary Service Commission has been pushing for.

Having ministers, now known as Cabinet secretaries, appointed from amongst MPs is an idea that has gained traction in recent times, with the opposition National Super Alliance (Nasa) reported to have also adopted the proposal.

Changing the requirement on the quorum would involve amending the Constitution, which sets the quorum at 50 MPs for the National Assembly and 15 senators for the Senate.

With the nominations approaching, MPs have been taking time away from Parliament, forcing voting on Bills and motions to be postponed.

A sitting cannot start until there are 50 MPs in the chambers and this has become a recurrent issue at the start of sittings this year.

The suggestion to have the quorum reduced from the current 50 is, however, not likely to go down well with critics of Parliament, with some MPs at the retreat warning their colleagues this would not be a good idea.

“With the perception out there that MPs don’t work, even contemplating changing the Constitution on the quorum is suicidal for Parliament,” North Horr MP Chachu Ganya warned his colleagues as that resolution was discussed.

Having Cabinet secretaries appointed from among MPs would mean that the current system of government changes from purely presidential to the hybrid that existed before the Constitution was enacted in 2010.

HANDLING ELECTION PETITIONS

The leadership also agreed with a proposal by Chief Justice David Maraga to change the law to restrict the handling of election petitions and increase the size of the Political Parties Disputes Tribunal.

Justice Maraga’s proposal is that the tribunal should have temporary members to enable it to handle the many anticipated disputes from the nominations.

He also wants petitions for MCAs’ elections to end at the High Court and those for MP, senator and governor stopped at the Court of Appeal. This would mean that the Supreme Court would only handles a petition from the presidential election.

In the review of standing orders before the term of the current House expires, the MPs will insert provisions to make it harder for a party to remove its members from committees.

The changes would allow for a process of fair hearing and fair administrative action, which would place more responsibility on a party before a decision to remove a member is affected.

The leadership also agreed to have the standing orders changed so that the watchdog Public Investments Committee (PIC) and Public Accounts Committee (PAC) are dominated by Opposition MPs in addition to having one of their own at its head. This is intended to enhance oversight of the government.

In the current circumstances, the PIC and PAC are headed by the Opposition but the Jubilee Party has a majority of the members, which creates the potential for the government to negate their work by having its MPs shoot down any unwelcome proposals.