The legislative autonomy and effectiveness of the 8th (1998-2002) Kenyan parliament

Abstract

This study seeks to establish whether or not the 1998-2002 Kenyan Parliament was effective in carrying out its legislative role. According to Section 30 of the Kenya constitution, the legislature and the executive share legislative power. The study sought to find out under what conditions a legislature exercises autonomy vis-a-vis the executive in the legislative process. The following indicators were used to measure the effectiveness of the Kenyan Parliament: bills presented to Parliament that are debated and passed, number of amendments and whether they were proposed by the government or backbench or committees, number of motions from private members and political parties that are passed into Acts. Our findings are that over the years, the Kenyan Parliament operated under the shadow of the executive under conditions of muted parliamentary democracy. The study was based on an analysis of all the bills (103) as well as all the motions recording in a 25 per cent sample of 126 Weekly verbatim reports of Parliaments daily proceedings. It is also noteworthy that 73.9 per cent of bills presented to Parliament received serious scrutiny in Parliament. Further, in 1998-1999, 86.5 per cent of bills moved by the executive were enacted into law. This figure dropped to an average of 40.1 per cent in the period 2000-2002. From these facts, we have concluded that Parliament began to exercise its autonomy in earnest after 1999., To our mind Parliament's growing legislative independence is based on two factors: a) the establishment of a Parliamentary Service Commission, which made Parliament financially independent; this meant that the Government no longer controlled their budget; and b) the establishment of a Parliamentary Service Commission enabled Parliament to invest resources in the committee system, thereby enabling MPs to develop the mechanisms and expertise needed to engage in active, legislative policy making. Our conclusion is that multiparty politics was necessary, but not sufficient to make the Kenyan Parliament playa substantive role in law-making. It was not until the passage of the Parliamentary Service Commission Act that Parliament as an institution could resist executive efforts at political dominance. The study is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the study, presenting the statement of the problem, the objectives of the study, scope and justification of the study, the literature review, hypotheses theoretical framework and the methodology used. Chapter 2 presents a historical perspective of the Kenya Legislature and discusses the legislative process and provides a description of the Eighth Parliament and how selected reforms impacted on it. Chapters 3 and 4 present empirical findings and analysis of data. Chapter 5 gives the summary, conclusions, implications and recommendations of the study.