The legislative wheel at the Mombasa County Assembly is rolling slowly and only three Bills have been passed since the MCAs started sittings last year.
The Bills passed include the mandatory Finance Bill that is awaiting Governor Hassan Joho’s assent and the Appropriation Bill to allow spending.
Critics now say the County Assembly with 45 MCAs has been reduced to convening brief sittings with members making meaningless statements. Some critics say they act as a rubber-stamp for Governor Joho.
In the last assembly, 42 Bills were passed despite much political heat that saw Speaker Thadius Rajwayi kicked out after a fallout with Joho.
Finance Committee Chairman Mohamed Hatimy says the assembly leadership recently met County Secretary Francis Thoya and appealed to the county executive to generate Bills for consideration by the House.
“We are concerned that there are no other Bills passed since last year save for those two mandatory ones. We expect this situation to change after we met the County Secretary and asked the county executive members to be more aggressive and bring Bills to the House,” Hatimy said.
Stooges
He admits the last assembly appeared more productive, but denies that they are Joho’s stooges.
“It is wrong for anybody to claim that the County Assembly is being controlled by the executive. We pass only what is good for the people of Mombasa,” he says.
Bills are supposed to be generated by the executive and the MCAs through private members’ motions.
Thoya said the meeting between him and the assembly leadership agreed that more Bills will be generated and communication between the assembly and the executive improved.
On June 22, civil society groups led by the International Centre for Policy and Conflict presented a petition to Speaker Harub Kharti, detailing alleged ineptitude by the county lawmakers. “The assembly has been owned by external and internal forces in the government leading members to be rubber-stamp tools for all acts tabled in the assembly,” reads the petition.
The petition claims the current assembly was handpicked, financed and given campaign aid by the Joho regime and was only paying back by not playing its oversight role, especially in the area of budget-making.
But Joho’s supporters claim the assembly and Executive are working seamlessly because they consult regularly.
“The county is an independent arm of government. But Joho is ODM party leader and majority of MCAs are from ODM so there is nothing wrong if he rallies them to support party agenda,” Joho’s director of communications, Richard Chacha, said.
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