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 Kibaki’s 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.
"How the county government will be structured is a subject that will have to be addressed in a holistic manner. It is a controversial subject that the Committee of Experts that wrote the Constitution gave the Government five years to work out," says Muigai.
Suspicion that there are still elements in Government unhappy with the dispersion of Executive power to the grassroots informs the decision by ODM to uphold the Bill Kibaki rejected. A contest between ODM and the PNU is in the offing after chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Local Authorities David Ngugi acceded to presidential instructions to vary the clauses that give powers to the county governor to chair county security meeting, in addition restructuring the Provincial Administration in tandem with devolution.
Justice Minister Mutula Kilonzo told The Standard On Sunday "parochial interests" inform the row over the Bill by forces beholden to the old constitution. The indictment of his colleagues is based on his perceptions that some of them sleep on the job or are influenced to stay away from House business.
"It is not about the having the best minds. It is about the numbers in the House, and, often, it is also about parochial interests. It is neither first nor the last time (Parliament will suffer a quorum hitch)," the minister says.
Mutula was responding to questions as to how MPs passed a law the President found defective. The clauses the Executive wants amended were added on the floor of the House to the original Bill. The minister and AG are said to have dissuaded the President assenting to the Bill.
Doubts, however, persist that the contentious Bill had clauses that were in conflict with the Constitution. Fisheries Minister Amason Kingi says there is more to the President’s rejection of the Bill than meets the eye because in the countdown to passing of the law in Parliament on February 23, he had been properly informed of its contents.
"We are going to discuss the President’s memo as a party. Devolution is the cornerstone of the new Constitution. Without it, it will be impossible to devolve power to the people. We shall approach it as a party because it is what separate us from the other parties that have been frustrating the Constitution implementation because of their centralised authority mindsets," says Kingi, a member of the Cabinet sub-committee on implementation.
Kingi’s remarks follow a thread of resolutions of the ODM National Executive meeting on Monday to return the Bill Kibaki sent back to Parliament unchanged. He says his party will not support any amendment to the Bill Parliament enacted but the President declined to give assent to.
Security council
Ngugi proposes a deletion of the clause that gives the counter governor powers to chair national Security Council meetings and enact a sub-clause that establishes an inter-governmental forum chaired by the governor responsible for harmonisation of service rendered in the county.
Kingi says the move amounts to encroachment of the powers of the county by the presidency that would reduce the regional government to the role played by the Provincial Administration.
"The Provincial Administration has no basis in law. They want to use is to attack devolution. It was used to suppress the ordinary people. In the new Constitution, the power enjoyed by the governor is bereft of oppression," says the minister. It is intriguing that the President was not fully briefed before and during debate on the Bill. Ordinarily, before a Bill is taken to Parliament, the implementing ministry reviews it.
"Before the Bill comes to Parliament for debate and eventual enactment, they have to go through the Cabinet for probe and approval. The AG, who is the chief Government legal advisor and the line minister who coordinates the generation of Bills by ministries, are fully involved. The AG also sits on the CIC, which scrutinises the Bills before and after they go Parliament. The AG keeps the President informed at every stage," says Kingi.
Mutula and Muigai say the Bill was out reach of the institutions charged constitution implementation after reached the House for debate.
The Hansard record of proceedings for February 23, when Parliament passed the point to a tussle. Questions were raised about the executive’s commitment to devolution, having initially attempted to hijack and alter the contents of the Intergovernmental Relations Bill 2011, the Devolved Government Bill 2011, the County Governments Financial Management Bill 2011, which precipitated a tiff between Deputy Prime ministers Musalia Mudavadi and Uhuru Kenyatta. The two offices traded accusations of seeking to usurp powers of the other.
Rangwe MP Martin Ogindo hinted to the reluctance of the Government to pass devolution laws when he accused it of sabotaging the process.
