State officers seek House on summons

What you need to know:

  • Majority Leader to initiate search for a middle ground on behalf of ministers

The Executive is seeking a middle ground with Parliament on how parliamentary committees should conduct meetings with Cabinet secretaries and other officials.

This follows concern that Cabinet secretaries can hardly concentrate on their dockets because of numerous summons to appear before parliamentary committees.

Through the Majority Leader in the National Assembly, Mr Aden Duale, the Executive will be seeking guidance from the Speaker of the National Assembly on how House committees and their chairs will be relating with Cabinet secretaries, to allow both function effectively.

SPECIFIC CONCERN

The issue came up in a meeting held at State House on Friday, with specific concern on how to find a balance between the needs of Parliament and the need for Cabinet secretaries to work.

On Monday, Mr Duale said Parliament should not curtail the functions of the Executive. He told the Nation that both Houses of Parliament must be alive to the doctrine of separation of powers and must be careful not to violate it.

The Majority Leader said no member of the Executive had declined to honour committee summons, but investigations that require members of the Executive to appear before House committees must have a limit to allow the Executive to effectively perform in its day-to-day affairs.

“Now that we have only 18 ministers running huge departments, they need more time to carry out their executive functions,” he said.

The Judiciary has also raised concern with some of the summonses from the Legislature. Both the Attorney-General and the Chief Justice have raised issues with summons sent to their offices by some of the House committees.

Judges and magistrates at the weekend accused Parliament of gross interference in the constitutional independence of the Judiciary.

Through their association, they asked the Judicial Service Commission to ignore latest summons by a National Assembly committee, saying Parliament had no supervisory powers over the Judiciary.

The Majority Leader on Monday said House committees must be careful as their oversight on JSC is limited to matters of resources and administration.