NAIROBI: National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi yesterday dismissed a bid by three Opposition MPs to stop debate on the presidential speech and the confidential report that has a list of State officers and other civil servants accused of corruption.
The MPs had argued that the law did not envisage a situation where the President was a conduit of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) in exposing the people accused of corruption.
Junet Mohammed (Suna East), Olago Aluoch (Kisumu West) and Manson Nyamweya (South Mugirango) all said the law had been breached in getting the list to the House.
"Nobody has signed this document. We want to know the person who authored this because that is the procedure," said Mr Nyamweya.
According to procedure, all documents must be signed before they are submitted to the House, or have a forwarding letter.
Mr Aluoch said Article 254 of the Constitution was clear that if EACC wanted to submit a report, it ought to have "submitted it to Parliament and the President simultaneously".
He appeared to have a problem with the secret manner in which the EACC Chief Executive Officer Halakhe Waqo submitted the confidential list of people with pending complaints of corruption to the President.
"The issue is, how do reports of constitutional commissions come to Parliament? We did not ask for a report. If the President wanted a report, he wanted it for himself. He had no right to bring it to the House," said Aluoch.
The MPs wanted the Speaker to block Majority Leader Aden Duale (Garissa Township) from initiating debate on the speech of the President made last Thursday.
"Nobody mentioned in that confidential memo is guilty. The presumption of innocence until proven guilty is still valid. But the President must tell Kenyans about the rule of law. The men and women of this House gave a voluntary standing ovation. You can't do that and backtrack now that it is here," said Mr Duale.
William Cheptumo (Baringo North) said the Opposition MPs had to justify why they wanted the report out.
"What the President did was to inform the nation, through the National Assembly, of what was required of him," said Mr Cheptumo.
FORWARDING LETTER
The Speaker agreed with Duale and dismissed the arguments from the Opposition MPs as "superfluous". Mr Muturi said the speech and the documents President Uhuru Kenyatta submitted to the House had a forwarding letter to the Speaker's office. He said the issue of the signature did not suffice.
"Even the President's speech is not signed. Are you saying that even the speech is not authenticated?" asked Muturi.
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"The President has fulfilled his mandate with regard to the address to the nation. What is important is the speech of the President, which is already before the House without objection. Members are at liberty to consult that speech and make what they may of it."
The Speaker said MPs had no window to throw the speech out but only to disagree with it.
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