CONSTITUTION OF KENYA REVIEW ... - ConstitutionNet

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Francis Chege – ukuragia uhoro wa bunge when it is dissolved what happens. According to the new constitution, iroiga ati
there will never be at one time a vacuum. Kwoguo lower house irithiaga 5 years, ino ingi 4 years so elections are at different
times. There other thing is that tariu lower house githurano kirikagwo 45 days before end of that parliament so that they hand
over properly to the new people who have been elected to make sure that there is no vacuum at any one time. Nigetha andu
matikarigagwo what happens now like in the situation we are in now, if parliament is dissolved from now the questions that the
Kenyans were asking is who is incharge now So that is the way we have dealt with it.
Now, currency I want to suggest that may be we should have dealt with it I am going to take that as a report for I know I
heard of it many times, but it is not in constitution and I think it was not discussed as a policy issue. So as I said ino ni
consultation ya keri, we are coming to tell you what you told us and what we have recommended, so if new issues come us or
issues that need to be taken on board. We are going to write this particular report, na nigetha tu recommend the national
constitutional conference and so that the issues can be picked up during the national constitutional conference. I know they
have said there should be no photographs of the president on the currency and so forth.
Now the President being the one giving degrees that one we have removed. Mungirora haria tukugite powers of the President,
we have made sure that those powers are documented so that we know the functions of the President according to the
constitution so that we don’t have to have so many other things iria riu irekwo. Tariu gutuika the head of all public universities, it
really doesn’t make much sense but we have removed them.
Now traditional liquor we have talked about. There is no need of two houses – let me put it also this way that this was also a
recommendation from Kenyans about the two houses and one of the things twa debate aga ni ati, what will be the difference
between the two houses what can we do to make sure there is no conflict between the 2 houses, na hatiri na duplication of
efforts between the two houses; and that one the debate is still going on. But there was somebody who talked about the first
constitution – the 1st constitution was actually a majimbo constitution but within two years majimbo had been removed. Now
the question is, angikorwo devolving power to the district is an important issue to Kenyans the question we ask – how can we
protect devolution How can we protect the way we have devolved power to… what happened with the first constitution, is
that you dissolve the regional govts, and then concentrated power at the centre. Na nitui ati changes ciothe cia constitution the
39 changes, most of them were to concentrate power in the executive and that brought most of the powers we have heard with
the current constitution.
So one of the major functions of the upper house was to safeguard devolution. Tondu tendency ya andu kuoya powers is very
strong, if the lower house decides to ammend the constitution, and by the way we have also said ati matingieheria powers icio
ciathii kuri districts without a referundum. So they cannot do it without asking the Kenyans do you agree we dissolve the
district councils and so on But let me also say that we are still preparing some of the details, kwanja riu the cost of the house,