Kenya Chief Justice Advises President to Dissolve Parliament
Kenya’s top judge advised President Uhuru Kenyatta to dissolve parliament for failure to enact legislation on gender quotas.
(Bloomberg) -- Kenya’s top judge advised President Uhuru Kenyatta to dissolve parliament for failing to enact legislation on gender quotas.
Chief Justice David Maraga’s guidance didn’t impose a deadline, enabling the president to wait until his goverment’s mandate expires in 2022 to heed the advice. Under a new constitution adopted in 2010, Kenya had five years to enact legislation ensuring that no more than two-thirds of members of elective public bodies be of the same gender.
Parliament “failed to enact the requisite legislation,” Maraga said in a statement emailed Monday from the capital, Nairobi. “It is my constitutional duty to advise you, the president of the Republic of Kenya, which I hereby do, to dissolve parliament.”
State House spokeswoman Kanze Dena declined to comment.
In the event parliament isn’t dissolved, laws it passes in the wake of the chief justice’s advisory risk being challenged in court, said Dismas Mokua, a Nairobi-based political analyst.
“Reading from the political mood today in Kenya, I doubt whether the president will take the risk of dissolving parliament tomorrow,” Mokua said. “He will cause unnecessary tension in Kenya and he is trying to work on his legacy.”
Kenya’s parliament currently consists of the National Assembly and the Senate. The former has 349 members, of which 47 are guaranteed for women who are elected by the nation’s counties. The latter has 67 senators, of whom 16 are women nominated by political parties according to their proportion of elected senators.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.