Wako Under Fire From CIC Over Over Delayed Bill

Nairobi Star (Nairobi)

Nzau Musau

29 June 2011

Attorney General Amos Wako was on the spot last night after the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution stopped short of dubbing him an “impediment” to the implementation process over inordinate delay of the election body law.

Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Mutula Kilonzo also endorsed CIC chair Charles Nyachae’s strongly worded rebuke of Wako saying it is unacceptable that such an important Bill as Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission is yet to get to the President for assent a month after it was passed by Parliament.

Mutula who is holding brief for Wako who is away in Sri Lanka told the Star he spent the entire day looking for the Bill and it was embarrassing that at his level, he cannot explain to Kenyans the correct status of the Bill. “I am tired of doing other people’s work when it is so clear that if the Bill was with me, it would not even spend a day with me before I take it to the President. It’s even sadder when you realise that without this body (IEBC), we cannot even think of preparing for next year’s election,” Mutula said.

Nyachae who also spoke to the Star said the commission is beginning to suspect that there is a deliberate ploy to delay the Bill. He could not understand why the Supreme Court Bill which was passed by Parliament most recently has already been forwarded to the President and assented into law.

Nyachae said he began to ask himself why the AG had to stay in office long after the promulgation of the constitution, if he would not be of much help to a process which Kenyans overwhelmingly support. “The question that arises is whether the inordinate delay of one month to present the Bill to the President, is a deliberate ploy to stall the implementation process, or whether it is a result of lack of appreciation of the import of the constitutional obligation the AG has in the process.” “In either event, from the perspective of CIC in the discharge of its mandate, the AG begins to appear like an impediment to the process,” Nyachae wrote in a letter to Wako yesterday, copied to Mutula, Kenya Law Reform Commission chair Kathurima M’Inoti and MP Mohammed Abdikadir.

During last week’s constitutional implementation conference, Wako said three Bills including IEBC were ready for signing into law even then. Both the President and the Prime Minister were in the conference hall when Wako made the statement. Nyachae now says that if the delay persists, he will have to petition both the President and PM to act and quoting Article 156 (6) of the constitution said the AG will have failed the people of Kenya.

Parliamentary Oversight Committee chair Mohammed Abdikadir however defended Wako and said there was nothing “evil” in the delay. He said the Bill is stuck in-between Parliament and the AG’s office.

“You will remember we made a lot of amendments on the Bill unlike the Supreme Court Bill which passed without a single amendment. The problem is compounded by the fact that the AG’s office is swamped with a lot of work against few state lawyers because they are not good employers,” he said.

Nyachae however said he is unable to understand how the process of fixing what parliament has passed into the final Bill to be taken to the president for assent can take more than three days because “its purely editorial work.”

He said the country has no option but to have the election body in place as soon as possible because “election date cannot simply be changed because the country has delayed.”

Sources told the Star the Bill’s delay is pegged to the issue of delimitation of boundaries and the 2012 election date as well. Those opposed to the August 2012 election date want to delay the new poll body so that it does not beat the end July deadline for delimiting the boundaries which must be done a year before the poll date. The idea is therefore to delay the new body and by extension the delimited boundaries beyond July in which case, the election will inevitably be beyond August owing to the popularity of additional constituencies among Kenyans. “That is pure superstition, if you were to ask me! Although I do not know what they are planning, I am a Christian and I know God will uncover their evil plans if indeed those are the plans,” Mutula said while dismissing this argument. He attributed the problem to bureaucracy.

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