Senate Speaker Amason Kingi.
The Azimio la Umoja one Kenya coalition is set to move a motion to discuss the conduct of Senate Speaker Amason Kingi over his order to have the Senate "operate in darkness" on Wednesday, June 26, 2024.
The latest development comes as senators thwarted an attempt by the Senate Majority leadership to adjourn the House for three weeks.
A senior Minority Senator told the Nation on June 27, 2024, that they were considering moving a substantive motion to discuss Speaker Kingi's move to bar any live coverage of the Senate on June 26.
In the motion, the lawmaker said, they want to know what powers the Speaker has to order the suspension of live broadcasts of Senate proceedings.
“The Speaker is the problem. He ensured that the proceedings were not live. What power does he have to switch off transmission?” posed the senator.
He explained that in order to discuss the conduct of the Speaker, they will have to move a substantive motion to demand answers on what authority Mr Kingi used to muzzle senators' expression on Wednesday.
Substantive motion
“This can only be discussed by bringing a substantive motion. We are considering bringing the motion next week. Parliament should never operate in darkness,” said the legislator.
"We are now being told that any senator who wants to get footage of what they said can make a request, but that should not be the case because what we say should be in the public domain and it should not be something you request," he said.
At the same time, a last-minute call to senators saw attempts by the Senate leadership to adjourn the House until July 16, 2024, fall flat on its face after senators joined hands to defeat an adjournment motion by Majority Leader Aaron Cheruiyot (Kericho).
In his communication to the House on Wednesday, Speaker Kingi cited the invasion of Parliament by anti-tax protestors on Tuesday as being at the heart of the move to try to adjourn the House.
He said that the attack saw the Senate fail to hold its Tuesday afternoon sitting and as a consequence, the Senate Business Committee, in its special meeting on Wednesday, agreed to alter the House’s calendar.
The Senate is scheduled to be in session until August 8, 2024, but the motion by Senator Cheruiyot proposed the adjournment of the Senate to July 16, 2024. The Senate had just resumed from a three-week-long recess on Tuesday.
However, senators voted 19 against nine to defeat the bid by the Senate Business Committee chaired by Speaker Kingi.
Nyamira Senator Okong'o Omogeni, who rose to oppose the adjournment motion, said the people were looking to them to provide solutions to the problems plaguing the country and by adjourning the House, it would be seen as "running away from facing the challenges and problems we face as a country".
“If you adjourn this House and I retreat to the village, how will I address the issues on the table? I oppose. We cannot adjourn while the country is burning,” said Mr Omogeni.
“Parliament can sit even during war. However, if we adjourn and run away, we are cowards,” he added.
Nandi Senator Samson Cherarkey said there was no way Parliament would ‘run away from its responsibility even during times of war.
He argued that this was the right time for Parliament to sit down and be part of the conversation on the issues that young people, or Generation Z, are raising.
“Imagine if young people tomorrow said in their proposal that they need policy and legislative intervention, where will we be? We will be somewhere taking care of cows in Narok or Luanda where the market is in disarray. Let us avoid being emotional,” Mr Cherarkey said.
Other senators who voted against the adjournment included Moses Kajwang’ (Homa Bay), Peris Tobiko (nominated), Crystal Asige (nominated), Enoch Wambua (Kitui), and Catherine Mumma (nominated).
Senator Kajwang' said there was no way they could have supported an adjournment as it would be tantamount to "running away from our constitutional mandate when our people are lying in morgues, hospitals and detention centres".
Time of war
"Why should we run away from Kenyans at a time of war? Where will people get political justice when parliament is closed? We have so many unanswered questions that cannot be answered by the counties but by the House using all the privileges we have," said Mr Kajwang'.
He urged the House to instead summon the country's security chiefs to explain the security breach in Parliament and the wanton shooting and killing of protesters by the police.
"The Speaker must have been instructed to take the House into recess. He really tried to push in that direction but we stood our ground," said a senator who did not want to be named.
"They came arrogantly thinking that members would just support going into recess but we shot it down by voting against the motion across the political divide," he added.
The House failed to sit on both Wednesday and Thursday afternoons due to a lack of quorum.
