Confusion over special sitting to debate BBI

Confusion reigns over the fate of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) Bill after the House leadership differed on the special sitting to debate the constitutional amendment.

Whereas a section of the House leadership led by National Assembly Majority Leader Amos Kimunya and his Minority counterpart John Mbadi said the special sitting will be on Wednesday and Thursday, the office of the Speaker indicated that no such plans were afoot.

Kimunya said yesterday that Speaker Justin Muturi would gazette the special sitting today.

He intimated that they had written to Muturi seeking a special sitting on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to dispense with the BBI.

Mbadi said the sitting had been planned for last week, but technicalities forced them to seek new dates this week.

“We will have the special sitting on Wednesday and Thursday and clear with the BBI matter,” he said.

But the Speaker told The Standard there were no such plans. In a text message, he said he had not received any request for a special sitting and neither was he gazetting any dates.

“If there was (a sitting), you would have seen a gazette notice to that effect,” Muturi said yesterday.

Lugari MP Ayub Savula said the special sitting will involve passing the BBI Bill and Division of Revenue (DoRA) Bill, which will appropriate cash to the counties.

“It is not BBI alone that we will be looking at in the special sitting, but also the DoRA Bill and other House business issues. If it was BBI alone we would have said let’s wait until the House resumes next week,” said Savula. A source at Muturi’s office revealed that they did not see any sense in recalling the MPs just a week before the official resumption of the House on May 4 from the long recess.

The back and forth comes as high octane politics is expected in the National Assembly and the Senate sitting to debate controversial BBI reports.

Last week during a meeting at Cotu Secretary General Francis Atwoli’s residence attended by Jubilee vice-chairman David Murathe, Secretary-General Raphael Tuju, MP Junet Mohammed, former Gatanga MP Peter Kenneth, and Senator James Orengo, they insisted on the urgency of BBI and urged Parliament to come up with a date for the special sitting

Even if it passes, the Independent and Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC) cannot hold a referendum.

In February, a five-judge bench of the High Court restrained IEBC from holding a referendum until six petitions questioning the exercise are heard and determined.

The confusion compounds a situation where the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill 2020 is caught up in a rut over disagreements by the Joint Justice and Legal Affairs Committee (JLAC) of the National Assembly and Senate over the sticky point of the 70 constituencies.

On Saturday, JLAC produced two reports of public participation that will now be debated in the two Houses.  

Though Parliament legally has little role in passing or rejecting the Bill by the popular initiative before it goes to the referendum, the majority of the committee members were of the view that the Bill will be unconstitutional if it was passed as is.

It has emerged that the joint committee co-chaired by Muturi Kigano (Kangema MP) and Senator Okong’o Omogeni (Nyamira) is unable to agree on which position to take and has prepared two reports.

Some of the expected divergent points are whether or not Parliament can revisit the Bill and make changes