AG Launches Legislative Framework for Public Participation Draft Bill
Attorney General Dorcas Oduor receives the Public Participation Bill from National Assembly Clerk Samuel Njoroge on September 6, 2024
The Attorney General has unveiled the Public Participation Draft Bill aimed at establishing a comprehensive legal framework to ensure the public’s views are considered during the development of government policies.
Every time we have a problem in the Ruto regime tries to grab Kenyan taxpayer money for all sorts of things it comes down to public participation as provided in our 2010 constitution. It goes to court and everything is on hold starting from Finance Bills 2023/2024/2025. It never ends. Now they have the Adani crazy moves to grab JKIA with the help of the Ruto government. It is going to the public participation requirement.
But what exactly are the requirements for public participation according to the 2010 constitution? Nobody knows because no bill has been passed in parliament about that part of the constitution.
The 2010 Kenya constitution is very good and me and then Chief Justice Willy Mutunga had a big argument at the University of Nairobi when he called a public meeting at the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hall which was packed to the roof, and I told him the Katiba is good in many parts but he cannot implement it.
I told him about Chapter Six of the Katiba which said thieves, murderers, and criminals cannot run the government.
I asked Dr. Mutunga how he could make that work because those were the people running the government and still are. He had no answers and that is where we are. The Chief Justice does not make the constitution and we agreed on that.
Dr. Mutunga is a great friend of mine and we have been together both in Canada where he was teaching at York University and in Jamhuri. He played a very big role in setting up the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) which was the first state-run human rights commission in Kenya.
As the head of the Supreme Court, I told him the best things in the 2010 constitution cannot be implemented because that is how it was designed.
Same thing with public participation. What exactly is public participation supposed to be? For MPs, it is about them screaming in parliament or going to rallies to talk about how important they are. Is that really public participation?
So here is the deal. Let the new AG Dorcas Oduor set up the Public Participation rules in parliament so that Kenyans can decide what is good for them including JKIA deals. Then the AG should then go ahead and introduce Integrity Rules in parliament as provided in Chapter Six of the 2010 constitution. Right now Chapter Six is useless because there are no rules to follow.
One more thing for the new AG to address is the CDF money. In August 2022 the Supreme Court ruled that CDF was illegal because MPs should not have access to national money. The Ruto government which doesn’t care about the Supreme Court handed the money back to the MPs and of course, Martha Koome the Chief Justice doesn’t care about that. Why should she when they have a government that doesn’t give a shit about anything?
It is now time for the AG to put in frame a legal framework for CDF. I am surprised that none of the human rights organizations in Kenya has put up a case about this in court. Where is Okiya Omtatah when you need him?
