By JUMA KWAYERA
A showdown between the Grand Coalition partners is on the cards in Parliament when an amended version of the County Government Bill 2012 is tabled for debate.
President Kibakiâs rejection of the Bill puts MPs under the spotlight with the Executive terming them as parochial and indifferent to their work. At the time the Bill was passed around midnight, the House had no quorum.
The number of MPs who enacted the Bill illustrates the indiscipline in Parliament resulting is faulty legislation. Senior Government officials who declined to be identified says mischief in Parliament has become so pervasive to the extent it is costing the country dearly.
Questions about the inability of the Government to marshal troops to transact business, especially the role of Leader of Government Business in the House, Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, who, too, was absent at the time, have arisen.
The imminent showdown follows suspicions the President is acting at the behest of the National Security and Intelligence Service to enable the central government run the county government through re-assigned Provincial Administration.
The turn of events has a ring of the sneaking of the phrase "national security" into the Bill of Rights in 2010 when the new Constitution was taken to Government Press for printing.
The action, later attributed to the NSIS, infuriated the then AG Amos Wako, who called for punitive punishment for the culprits, who to this day are yet to be unearthed.
Dismissed claim
However, Attorney-General Githu Muigai dismissed talk of the Executive undermining Constitution implementation as baseless.
"The consensus Bill that was brought to the House had been agreed upon by all the parties. When the amendment was introduced on the floor of the House, there was nothing CIC, the Law Reform Commission and other player would have done. The Executive is not derailing the Constitution. If the President was sabotaging the Constitution, the he woud not have assented to other two Bills," says Prof Muigai.
The AG argues even if the amendments brought by Bura MP Nuh Nassir Abdi to addess how the Provincial Administration would function relative to the country, it would not have provided an instant fix.
