Improving the Efficiency of Committees in Kenya’s Parliament: The Case of National Assembly
Category: General
By: Leo Kipkogei Kemboi,
Article 93 establishes the Parliament of Kenya with two chambers namely the National Assembly and the Senate. each of the two chambers shall perform their respective functions as set out in the Constitution. Having two houses of Parliament is called a Bicameral Parliament. The bicameral system, also called bicameralism, a system of government in which the legislature comprises two houses. The modern bicameral system dates back to the beginnings of constitutional government in 17th-century England and to the later 18th century on the continent of Europe and in the United States.
The Constitution of Kenya 2010 elevated the roles and powers of the parliamentary committees. The basis of this article is to isolate constitutional provisions that spell out the mandate of Parliamentary committees and analyse whether they are effective to anticipated standards in the Constitution. Parliament is one of the key institutions in Kenya’s Multiparty democracy. To undertake its functions as outline in Article 94 of the Constitution, Parliament will spend Ksh 39.15 billion in the year 2020/21 . Parliament’s spending is equivalent to eight days of taxes in a year . This would be equivalent to Ksh. 9.8 billion every quarter or Ksh. 107.26 million every day.
Given the magnitude of spending and principles of Public Finance outlined in the Constitution, Parliament needs to demonstrate the value for money as per article 20. As a branch of government, Parliament is bound by article 35(3) of the Constitution and is required to publish and publicize any important information that affects the nation. Parliament deliberates by way of motions, bills and oversight mechanisms. Parliament administration is handled by the Parliamentary service commission which is an independent commission.
Article 124 requires that when a House of Parliament considers any appointment for which its approval is required under this Constitution or an Act of Parliament the appointment shall be considered by a committee of the relevant House. The committee’s recommendation shall be tabled in the House for approval, and the proceedings of the committee and the House shall be open to the public. Parliamentary committees are increasingly addressing complex emerging issues in society which include Competition, pervasive procurement fraud, and state fragility. From practice, it is evident that committees are engines that drive Parliament. The United States Senate considers Committees as fact-finding, consensus-building, policy-recommending panels .
Roles of Committees as Organs of Parliament
The economic concept behind parliamentary committees is the division of labour and specialization. Division of labour combines specialization and the partitions of the complex production task into several, or many, sub-tasks . Much of Parliament’s work is done through committees. Parliamentary Committee membership enables members of the National Assembly and the Senate to develop specialized knowledge of the substantive issues under their jurisdiction. The processes of Parliamentary committees such as questioning and speaking time must be out rightly clear. There’s a huge opportunity cost anytime any Committee of Parliament drops the ball in its work. In this article, I isolate two constitutional principles and give solutions that can help Parliament get more efficient trade-offs. They include the committee’s powers to summon and operational efficiency.
A. Constitutional Efficiency of Committees of Parliament
The national assembly committee tabled 188 reports in the house in 2018. At least 47 reports were tabled every quarter or 2 reports being tabled every five days. From a policy perspective, that’s a lot of work. The quality of the Committee’s work and value for money in fact-finding, investigation and analysis of policies matters in increasing the efficiency of the economy. In undertaking their duties, the Constitution requires the Committees to spent public resources prudently and responsibly.
I select 15 of the 23 committees in the national assembly with a strong emphasis on those that deal with critical services mentioned in chapter four of the Constitution. In one single year, the national assembly dealt with 228 questions with most being dispensed away by the Committees of; Administration and National Security; Transport, Public Works and Housing; Agriculture and Livestock and Education and Research. On petitions, Lands Committee leads followed by Environment and Natural Resources; Labour and Social Welfare; Transport, Public Works and Housing and Justice and Legal Affairs. Bills and Legislative proposals were largely from administration and national security and justice and legal affairs committees. In terms of Bills, the Committee of Finance and National Planning in that year had the largest number followed by the Administration and National Security Committee, and the Agriculture and Livestock Committee.
Table 1 above shows urgent issues of concern by Kenyans and needs the attention of the national assembly and largely parliament come from the security and justice sector, land and natural resources. With most issues being Questions and Petitions,
My four radical measures to improve how parliamentary Committees to meet the operational efficiency as outlined in the Constitution are as follows.
1. The autonomy of Parliamentary Committees
Due to the nature of work undertaken by members of parliament, the link between their parties and how matters before committees should proceed should be delinked. The leadership of the Majority and the Minority Party in Parliament should develop their mechanisms of populating the parliamentary seats at the beginning of every term of Parliament. The mechanisms of populating Parliamentary seats must be consistent with the Constitution of Kenya and applicable laws. It must include balloting by Committee members to determine the leadership of the Committees.
Although the party bias and interests should guide how committees and matters before committees proceed, the constitution has a different perspective on the same. Once a member of parliament has been elected and sworn in, they are considered as state officers as per the definition of a state officer in article 260. Apart from exercising the constitutional functions, state officers are required to advance the rule of law and contribute to good governance not just because of the constituencies they represent but the Republic of Kenya. The standing orders should be amended to reflect the operational independence of Committees of Parliament from party politics which limits the power of forces outside parliament.
2. Introducing Autonomous ‘’Committee Counsel’’ for Witness Questioning
The Counsel will work with members and committee leadership in establishing questions about constitution, law, regulation, policy and notable facts regarding any matter that any witness summoned ought to answer. At least one-third of all time dedicated for witness should be taken up by the Counsel. Thereafter, committee members can follow up with questions their constituents would like to ask. The minimum time allocated should be at least 20 minutes for every member uninterrupted. Each member should have five minutes for introductory remarks and fifteen minutes for question time.
3. General Composition of Committees; Concept of Ranking Members
Most of the committees are populated with Majority and Minority Parties within Committees. The big issue is that the majority party will always have an upper hand on how committees are managed. There is a need for the minority party to caucus in the Committee under a Senior leader or Ranking Minority member. The ranking member or has the same privileges as the chairperson of the committee such as speaking for a longer time. There’s a need to level up the playing field in the Committees given the tight control political parties have on their members of parliament. The minority caucus at the committee levels will eventually build up to Minority Caucus Chairperson and the Minority Leader at the National Assembly or the Senate Level.
For both the majority and Minority groups to work effectively, there’s a need for a clear role and rank differentiation. Zlatev, Halevy and Tiedens (2016) argue that rank differentiation supports the division of labour by incentivizing group members, satisfying fundamental human needs, and organizing and integrating the contributions of differentiated group members . The main problem in Parliamentary committees is the parties make directions to Committee first before issues are completely ventilated upon in the National Assembly or the Senate.
4. Modernizing the Committee to meet complex and emerging issues
The committees must be able to match their roles given the issues committees of committees are becoming complex on a day-to-day basis. I draw a simple expected structure of the Modern Parliamentary committee.
At present, the majority of all committees have clerical staff. However modern Parliamentary committees require specific skillsets to be able to ventilate on issues before Parliament. Committee Counsel has to ensure that constitutional and statutory obligations are fulfilled by the Committee when undertaking their functions.
As explained earlier, Parliament should systems, structures and personnel should match up the efficiency seen in Kenya’s most effective firms. In the doctrine of separation of powers firmly in CoK 2010, Parliament’s roles and especially National Assembly Committees was elevated. Aside from representation, oversight and law-making, the Kenyan legislature was added powers of budget making and control of public finances.
B. Powers to Summon
Most of the additional powers and responsibilities were necessitated on the historical occurrences. The witness was summoned to parliament but failed to appear repeatedly over several occasions on an issue where the constitutional and legal principles were violated . Most witnesses, in this case, are individuals deemed to be very powerful in public(especially the executive arm of government) and the private sector . The witnesses were called to parliament to shed light on issues parliament is an oversight or even they could be primary actors in the issue parliament is investigating.
Article 125 requires that either House of Parliament, and any of its committees, has the power to summon any person to appear before it to give evidence or provide information. The same article House of Parliament and any of its committees has the same powers as the High Court to enforce the attendance of witnesses and examine them on oath, affirmation or otherwise; to compel the production of documents; and to issue a commission or request to examine witnesses abroad.
The high court equivalent powers to summon witnesses implies a committee of parliament can fine, jail or even limit the movement of witnesses until they appear before parliament. The constitution also expanded the jurisdiction of the witness residing outside the country. These provision in the Constitution has not been applied immensely by both houses of Parliament. The Senate has only applied this principle to governors who refused to appear before them.
For state officers especially accounting officers, committee members can pass resolutions to bar them from office, freeze pay and any other perks until they have appeared before committees of Parliament. Parliament should consider subpoena of documents, emails, and other electronic communications.
Conclusions
The Parliamentary Service Commission should consider publishing studies on the efficiency of Parliamentary Committees and inviting members of the public to give feedback. Also, on an annual basis, Parliament should invite testimonials from experts in the Public Policy field and Academia to provide ways in which Parliamentary rules can be improved to strengthen its operative efficiency. Inefficiencies at the Parliamentary committee’s level reflect poorly on each house of Parliament.
A fact-finding Parliament adds value to the livelihoods of Kenya by making the economic policy certain, expanding human rights and ensuring that constitutional guarantees are adhered to.
Endnotes
- Parliament refers to the two houses of Parliament which is the National Assembly and the Senate
- Parliamentary Budget Office. “Unpacking the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for 2020/2021 and the Medium Term,” May 2020. http://parliament.go.ke/sites/default/files/2020-05/unpacking%20of%20the%202020%20budget%20final%20word_0.pdf.
- Assumes daily tax collections to be Ksh 5 billion.
- United States Senate. “United States Senate Committees.” Accessed March 2, 2021. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Committees.htm.
- Munger, Michael. “Division of Labor.” Econlib, 2020. https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/DivisionofLabor.html#:~:text=Division%20of%20labor%20combines
- The National Assembly. “Report on the Affairs of the National Assembly during the Second Session of 12th Parliament- February to December 2018.” parliament.go.ke. Nairobi: The National Assembly, April 2019. http://www.parliament.go.ke/sites/default/files/2019-04/2nd%20Session%20Report.pdf.
- Zlatev, Julian J., Nir Halevy, and Larissa Z. Tiedens. “Roles and Ranks: The Importance of Hierarchy for Group Functioning.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x15001545.
- Miriri, Duncan. 2020. “Kenya’s $580m Medical Equipment Leasing Deal ‘Criminal’ -Senate Panel.” Reuters, September 9, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/kenya-health-idINL8N2G622A.
- In the Public Sector these individuals included Cabinet Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, and other highly public officials while individuals in the private sector included leaders of corporations especially that undertook trading with the government.
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Improving the Efficiency of Committees in Kenya’s Parliament: The Case of National Assembly
| Post date: Tue, Mar 16, 2021 |
| Category: General |
| By: Leo Kipkogei Kemboi, |
Article 93 establishes the Parliament of Kenya with two chambers namely the National Assembly and the Senate. each of the two chambers shall perform their respective functions as set out in the Constitution. Having two houses of Parliament is called a Bicameral Parliament. The bicameral system, also called bicameralism, a system of government in which the legislature comprises two houses. The modern bicameral system dates back to the beginnings of constitutional government in 17th-century England and to the later 18th century on the continent of Europe and in the United States.
The Constitution of Kenya 2010 elevated the roles and powers of the parliamentary committees. The basis of this article is to isolate constitutional provisions that spell out the mandate of Parliamentary committees and analyse whether they are effective to anticipated standards in the Constitution. Parliament is one of the key institutions in Kenya’s Multiparty democracy. To undertake its functions as outline in Article 94 of the Constitution, Parliament will spend Ksh 39.15 billion in the year 2020/21 . Parliament’s spending is equivalent to eight days of taxes in a year . This would be equivalent to Ksh. 9.8 billion every quarter or Ksh. 107.26 million every day.
Given the magnitude of spending and principles of Public Finance outlined in the Constitution, Parliament needs to demonstrate the value for money as per article 20. As a branch of government, Parliament is bound by article 35(3) of the Constitution and is required to publish and publicize any important information that affects the nation. Parliament deliberates by way of motions, bills and oversight mechanisms. Parliament administration is handled by the Parliamentary service commission which is an independent commission.
Article 124 requires that when a House of Parliament considers any appointment for which its approval is required under this Constitution or an Act of Parliament the appointment shall be considered by a committee of the relevant House. The committee’s recommendation shall be tabled in the House for approval, and the proceedings of the committee and the House shall be open to the public. Parliamentary committees are increasingly addressing complex emerging issues in society which include Competition, pervasive procurement fraud, and state fragility. From practice, it is evident that committees are engines that drive Parliament. The United States Senate considers Committees as fact-finding, consensus-building, policy-recommending panels .
Roles of Committees as Organs of Parliament
The economic concept behind parliamentary committees is the division of labour and specialization. Division of labour combines specialization and the partitions of the complex production task into several, or many, sub-tasks . Much of Parliament’s work is done through committees. Parliamentary Committee membership enables members of the National Assembly and the Senate to develop specialized knowledge of the substantive issues under their jurisdiction. The processes of Parliamentary committees such as questioning and speaking time must be out rightly clear. There’s a huge opportunity cost anytime any Committee of Parliament drops the ball in its work. In this article, I isolate two constitutional principles and give solutions that can help Parliament get more efficient trade-offs. They include the committee’s powers to summon and operational efficiency.
A. Constitutional Efficiency of Committees of Parliament
The national assembly committee tabled 188 reports in the house in 2018. At least 47 reports were tabled every quarter or 2 reports being tabled every five days. From a policy perspective, that’s a lot of work. The quality of the Committee’s work and value for money in fact-finding, investigation and analysis of policies matters in increasing the efficiency of the economy. In undertaking their duties, the Constitution requires the Committees to spent public resources prudently and responsibly.
I select 15 of the 23 committees in the national assembly with a strong emphasis on those that deal with critical services mentioned in chapter four of the Constitution. In one single year, the national assembly dealt with 228 questions with most being dispensed away by the Committees of; Administration and National Security; Transport, Public Works and Housing; Agriculture and Livestock and Education and Research. On petitions, Lands Committee leads followed by Environment and Natural Resources; Labour and Social Welfare; Transport, Public Works and Housing and Justice and Legal Affairs. Bills and Legislative proposals were largely from administration and national security and justice and legal affairs committees. In terms of Bills, the Committee of Finance and National Planning in that year had the largest number followed by the Administration and National Security Committee, and the Agriculture and Livestock Committee.
Table 1 above shows urgent issues of concern by Kenyans and needs the attention of the national assembly and largely parliament come from the security and justice sector, land and natural resources. With most issues being Questions and Petitions,
My four radical measures to improve how parliamentary Committees to meet the operational efficiency as outlined in the Constitution are as follows.
1. The autonomy of Parliamentary Committees
Due to the nature of work undertaken by members of parliament, the link between their parties and how matters before committees should proceed should be delinked. The leadership of the Majority and the Minority Party in Parliament should develop their mechanisms of populating the parliamentary seats at the beginning of every term of Parliament. The mechanisms of populating Parliamentary seats must be consistent with the Constitution of Kenya and applicable laws. It must include balloting by Committee members to determine the leadership of the Committees.
Although the party bias and interests should guide how committees and matters before committees proceed, the constitution has a different perspective on the same. Once a member of parliament has been elected and sworn in, they are considered as state officers as per the definition of a state officer in article 260. Apart from exercising the constitutional functions, state officers are required to advance the rule of law and contribute to good governance not just because of the constituencies they represent but the Republic of Kenya. The standing orders should be amended to reflect the operational independence of Committees of Parliament from party politics which limits the power of forces outside parliament.
2. Introducing Autonomous ‘’Committee Counsel’’ for Witness Questioning
The Counsel will work with members and committee leadership in establishing questions about constitution, law, regulation, policy and notable facts regarding any matter that any witness summoned ought to answer. At least one-third of all time dedicated for witness should be taken up by the Counsel. Thereafter, committee members can follow up with questions their constituents would like to ask. The minimum time allocated should be at least 20 minutes for every member uninterrupted. Each member should have five minutes for introductory remarks and fifteen minutes for question time.
3. General Composition of Committees; Concept of Ranking Members
Most of the committees are populated with Majority and Minority Parties within Committees. The big issue is that the majority party will always have an upper hand on how committees are managed. There is a need for the minority party to caucus in the Committee under a Senior leader or Ranking Minority member. The ranking member or has the same privileges as the chairperson of the committee such as speaking for a longer time. There’s a need to level up the playing field in the Committees given the tight control political parties have on their members of parliament. The minority caucus at the committee levels will eventually build up to Minority Caucus Chairperson and the Minority Leader at the National Assembly or the Senate Level.
For both the majority and Minority groups to work effectively, there’s a need for a clear role and rank differentiation. Zlatev, Halevy and Tiedens (2016) argue that rank differentiation supports the division of labour by incentivizing group members, satisfying fundamental human needs, and organizing and integrating the contributions of differentiated group members . The main problem in Parliamentary committees is the parties make directions to Committee first before issues are completely ventilated upon in the National Assembly or the Senate.
4. Modernizing the Committee to meet complex and emerging issues
The committees must be able to match their roles given the issues committees of committees are becoming complex on a day-to-day basis. I draw a simple expected structure of the Modern Parliamentary committee.
At present, the majority of all committees have clerical staff. However modern Parliamentary committees require specific skillsets to be able to ventilate on issues before Parliament. Committee Counsel has to ensure that constitutional and statutory obligations are fulfilled by the Committee when undertaking their functions.
As explained earlier, Parliament should systems, structures and personnel should match up the efficiency seen in Kenya’s most effective firms. In the doctrine of separation of powers firmly in CoK 2010, Parliament’s roles and especially National Assembly Committees was elevated. Aside from representation, oversight and law-making, the Kenyan legislature was added powers of budget making and control of public finances.
B. Powers to Summon
Most of the additional powers and responsibilities were necessitated on the historical occurrences. The witness was summoned to parliament but failed to appear repeatedly over several occasions on an issue where the constitutional and legal principles were violated . Most witnesses, in this case, are individuals deemed to be very powerful in public(especially the executive arm of government) and the private sector . The witnesses were called to parliament to shed light on issues parliament is an oversight or even they could be primary actors in the issue parliament is investigating.
Article 125 requires that either House of Parliament, and any of its committees, has the power to summon any person to appear before it to give evidence or provide information. The same article House of Parliament and any of its committees has the same powers as the High Court to enforce the attendance of witnesses and examine them on oath, affirmation or otherwise; to compel the production of documents; and to issue a commission or request to examine witnesses abroad.
The high court equivalent powers to summon witnesses implies a committee of parliament can fine, jail or even limit the movement of witnesses until they appear before parliament. The constitution also expanded the jurisdiction of the witness residing outside the country. These provision in the Constitution has not been applied immensely by both houses of Parliament. The Senate has only applied this principle to governors who refused to appear before them.
For state officers especially accounting officers, committee members can pass resolutions to bar them from office, freeze pay and any other perks until they have appeared before committees of Parliament. Parliament should consider subpoena of documents, emails, and other electronic communications.
Conclusions
The Parliamentary Service Commission should consider publishing studies on the efficiency of Parliamentary Committees and inviting members of the public to give feedback. Also, on an annual basis, Parliament should invite testimonials from experts in the Public Policy field and Academia to provide ways in which Parliamentary rules can be improved to strengthen its operative efficiency. Inefficiencies at the Parliamentary committee’s level reflect poorly on each house of Parliament.
A fact-finding Parliament adds value to the livelihoods of Kenya by making the economic policy certain, expanding human rights and ensuring that constitutional guarantees are adhered to.
Endnotes
- Parliament refers to the two houses of Parliament which is the National Assembly and the Senate
- Parliamentary Budget Office. “Unpacking the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for 2020/2021 and the Medium Term,” May 2020. http://parliament.go.ke/sites/default/files/2020-05/unpacking%20of%20the%202020%20budget%20final%20word_0.pdf.
- Assumes daily tax collections to be Ksh 5 billion.
- United States Senate. “United States Senate Committees.” Accessed March 2, 2021. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Committees.htm.
- Munger, Michael. “Division of Labor.” Econlib, 2020. https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/DivisionofLabor.html#:~:text=Division%20of%20labor%20combines
- The National Assembly. “Report on the Affairs of the National Assembly during the Second Session of 12th Parliament- February to December 2018.” parliament.go.ke. Nairobi: The National Assembly, April 2019. http://www.parliament.go.ke/sites/default/files/2019-04/2nd%20Session%20Report.pdf.
- Zlatev, Julian J., Nir Halevy, and Larissa Z. Tiedens. “Roles and Ranks: The Importance of Hierarchy for Group Functioning.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x15001545.
- Miriri, Duncan. 2020. “Kenya’s $580m Medical Equipment Leasing Deal ‘Criminal’ -Senate Panel.” Reuters, September 9, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/kenya-health-idINL8N2G622A.
- In the Public Sector these individuals included Cabinet Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, and other highly public officials while individuals in the private sector included leaders of corporations especially that undertook trading with the government.
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