Kenyan MPs in last-minute rush to save CDF from abolition

NAIROBI: MPs are fast tracking a proposed bill to rescue the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) from abolition.

The lawmakers have come up with the National Government Constituency Development Fund Bill to save the CDF, with only 120 days to implementation of the High Court declaration for the kitty to cease operation.

The allocation for CDF is Sh35 billion in the 2014-15 financial year and the first tranche will go out today. Given the cash crisis in the Government, the Treasury and the MPs have cut a deal to have constituencies given Sh2 billion every week until the disbursement matches the year.

The MPs have published the bill and want it enacted within the next 45 days to sidestep the declaration of the High Court that the CDF was illegal and had to be wound up within a year. The court gave the MPs until February 19 to either wind up the fund or align to the Constitution.

In the new bill, the MPs have deleted their role as ex-officio members of CDF committees in their respective constituencies, but they have provided room, through regulations, for them to be able to influence who will be picked or even to appoint their proxies to the crucial committee that runs the fund and implements projects in the constituencies.

The idea is to solve the court's grouse that MPs' presence in the CDF committees was running afoul of the doctrine of separation of powers. The High Court had also ruled that the national government may roll out its policies at the county level but must do so through the structures recognised under the Constitution.
To deal with that, the MPs have drafted the bill to recognise the constituency as a platform for identification, performance and implementation of national government functions. They also say the bill, once enacted, will facilitate the performance and implementation of the national government's functions in all parts of the country.

"Once enacted, it will provide for the participation of people in the determination and implementation of the national government's development projects at the constituency level pursuant to Article 10(2) of the Constitution," reads the bill. The National Assembly's CDF Committee Chairman Moses Lessonet (Eldama Ravine), said with the publication of the draft law, the MPs will have an informal meeting to go through all the clauses in the bill to make sure that they agree with it, before it is introduced in the House.

The MPs have locked out the role of the Senate in the bill's legislation. They say the CDF billions will only deal with works and services falling within the functions of the national government or projects that are community-based to ensure that the benefits are available to many people.
"This bill does not concern county governments in terms of Article 110 of the Constitution," Mr Lessonet declares in the memo of the bill, in effect making sure that only the National Assembly will work on it before submitting it to President Kenyatta for assent.

To dodge the constitutional anomaly where CDF was taking revenues before they were shared between counties and the national government, the MPs have decided to target the national share of Government revenues.