Nominated MP Sabina Chege/SCREENGRABNominated MP Sabina Chege has rejected plans to implement a court ruling declaring Azimio la Umoja as the majority party in Parliament, questioning whether the coalition still exist.
Speaking on the floor of the House Tuesday, Chege said in the last two years, a lot has happened in terms of realignments.
"Mr Speaker, because you have to give a decision, you need to clear the air on the issue of majority and minority. After two years, many things have changed; there are post- and pre-coalition agreements," she said.
She cited Maendeleo Chap Chap, which she said left the coalition it had signed an agreement with before the general election. "
"As we make that decision, the question we should ask ourselves is are they still part of Azimio," she said.
"The other question is, does Azimio still exist?"
According to the lawmaker, Jubilee, who is a member of the coalition, left Azimio after the election.
She said as Jubilee members they wrote a letter notifying of intention to exit it, "and we are currently an independent political party."
"...so are we going to be counted in Azimio or as an independent?" she posed.
Sabina told the speaker that if there were doubts about the two sides, "we can queue and be counted to know who is on the majority side and minority."
She also questioned about the place of the broad-based government in the matter.
MPs resumed their sittings Tuesday after a two-month Christmas holiday.
The debate in the House stems from a ruling delivered on Friday by Justices John Chigiti, Jairus Ngaah, and Lawrence Mugambi, who argued that Wetang’ula acted unreasonably when he assigned 14 MPs who had defected from Azimio to the Kenya Kwanza coalition.
The speaker claimed several Azimio members had formally written to his office to denounce their association with Azimio.
These 14 MPs are from the United Democratic Movement, Movement for Democracy and Growth, Maendeleo Chap Chap, and Pamoja African Alliance.
But the bench said when Mudavadi signed an affidavit in court to oppose the case, he didn’t provide any evidence of any post-election agreements involving the said parties and the Kenya Kwanza coalition.
They also found that Wetang’ula had no basis to disregard the decision of the Registrar of Political Parties on membership of Azimio and Kenya Kwanza coalitions. Documents from the Registrar of Political Parties say Azimio consisted of 26 political parties while Kenya Kwanza had 15, as at April 21, 2022.
But, with the 14 members who allegedly denounced Azimio added to their side, the membership of Kenya Kwanza rose to 179 while membership of Azimio dropped to 157.
