We’re given raw deal in passing laws: Speaker

The Senate has accused President Uhuru Kenyatta of sidelining it in the passing of key laws.

Members also accused the President of failing to tap into the expertise in the Senate.

“Our House is a high concentration of power and brains and extensive expertise. We also have a great commitment to devolution,” Speaker Ekwe Ethuro said at the devolution conference that ended Friday in Kisumu.

There are a considerable number of former ministers, top lawyers and scholars in the Senate.

According to Mr Ethuro, the  Senate has now been forced to generate their own Bills.

“I am embarrassed to note that apart from the annual county allocation of revenue amendment Bill, not a single Bill has come to the Senate from the national Executive and the county governments through the Council of Governors as the proposers and executors of public policy,” Mr Ethuro said.

“We have, therefore, been left to our own devices to generate legislation based on our legal undertaking of the Constitution without the benefits of the practitioners,” he said,

Considering these circumstances, he said, the Senate has done extremely well, having generated 48 Bills, 150 motions, and passed numerous resolutions, including one to transfer all the functions that have been requested by counties and to have resources follow those functions.

Mr Ethuro said the Senate was an integral part of devolved governance and attempts to disband it would not succeed.

He said they would not allow the Senate to be killed.
“Senate plays a critical role in legislative agenda and we have remained faithful to the cause and shouldered the first historical burden of being a pioneer institution. Our role as the guardian angel of devolution cannot be wished away,” he said.

Governor Hussein Dado (Tana River) called for strengthening the Senate to give it more powers to protect counties.

“Any Bills touching on counties should go through the Senate. But you find that even the most important of the laws touching on development in counties never get to Senate,” he said.

Mr Dado said: “Senate should be strengthened as a proper upper House. It should even override some decisions made by the National Assembly.”
Mr Ethuro said the devolution journey had faced serious challenges.

County assemblies speakers and governors are being impeached, fist-fights are being  witnessed in some and the units still agitating for more resources and collecting less revenue than their discredited local authorities, he said.
He added that the Equalisation Fund was yet to be operationalised.

Doctors and nurses were striking because they want health to be made a national function while 15 counties have high mortality rates. He said the teacher shortage was so chronic that nobody even talked about it and that the few in some marginalized counties were being recalled by their unions on account of insecurity.

Court cases, he said, were the order of the day in the devolution family.
“All devolved functions have not been fully transferred to counties even after the Senate resolved so. As we speak, the wheel is threatening to come full cycle in the matter of Makueni County,” he said.

Our challenges, he said, have further been compounded by rampant insecurity.

He also said that at the national level, they also had their own battles, which the press like referring to as the supremacy wars.

GUARDIAN ANGEL OF DEVOLUTION

“But at the heart of all these wars are the operations of a bicameral parliament generally and the role of the Senate as the guardian Angel of Devolution:  Representing, promoting, and protecting Devolved Governance,” he said.

He said the mistakes are forgivable since they had only had two years of a new system of devolution which is considered a learning curve.
“Annual meetings serve as a cyclic management tool that is used to review the outcomes in the previous year. We should not therefore shy away from highlighting the challenges that befall us while at the same time celebrating devolution, “ he said.

He said he was pleased to confirm that devolution in Kenya was alive and kicking and working.
“It is gathering steam at very high speeds that is frightening the previous status quo. And indeed compared to the other jurisdictions, some of which give it upto 10 years, we have done very well as a country,” said the Senate Speaker.

He said counties were well established, some functions had been devolved and institutions were working.

Resources, he added, were being allocated and flowing, albeit grudgingly and have been expended to worthy projects like provision of services like water, health, Agriculture, roads construction, Bursaries.

Mr Ethuro noted that marginalised counties like Mandera have begun to feel like part of Kenya, save for the insecurity.
ET]