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Aden Duale denies fronting bill to have CJ David Maraga's key role stripped

That wasn't me - Duale denies.

On Wednesday, reports in a section of the media indicated that the Jubilee Lawmaker was warming up to present a bill in parliament which would “strip CJ and the DCJ off the duty to witness the swearing in of the president-elect”, and instead give the role to “any other Supreme Court Judge”.

The change of mind by Mr Duale comes in the wake of vicious attacks on the judiciary, with a few Jubilee MPs filing petitions against Supreme Court judges and the registrar of the Judiciary Mrs. Esther Nyaikai.

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Speaking when he tabled his controversial election law reforms bill in parliament on Thursday, Mr Duale has stated that the bill tabled in the house has not touched on any matter about Chief Justice David Maraga.

“This bill is not talking about the Supreme Court; it is not talking about CJ Maraga. That is why Mr Speaker the yesterday meeting didn’t take place. There is no clause on the Judicial Service Commission, so it is not an attack on anyone.

“I have no such intention. We as the ruling side, we don’t have any ill-motives of disrespecting that Judiciary. It is independent Mr Speaker,” Mr Duale.

He added: “There is no point in this bill in which the Judiciary has been mentioned as is being perpetrated by our friends in the House.”

Mr Duale has maintained that the bill only seeks to streamline the votes transmission system be accountable and understood by all.

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“Maina Kiai case negated the law, what their bill is seeking is to do a cleanup. This bill will give IEBC exact thong of what happened with the transmission. We need to clean this mess so that the IEBC finds it easy to transmit results and enable it to announce the winner of the October 26 polls winner,” Duale told the house.

Vote guarding scheme

In a newly proposed raft of measures, the Jubilee MPs agreed to include the clause to take powers of swearing in the President from the two heads of the Judiciary and confer it to “any judge of the Supreme Court”.

If the proposed law amendments on the constitution go through a parliamentary proceeding, it will hence mean that any Judge at the Supreme Court will be able to swear in the new president in the forthcoming elections.

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This new turn comes in even as the parliament, through its numbers on the Jubilee side, strives to replace the controversial electronic vote tally transmission process with a manual system.

It, therefore, beckons that Section 141(1) of the Constitution be amended. The Section currently states that: “the swearing in of the President-elect shall be in public before the Chief Justice, or, in the absence of the Chief Justice, the Deputy Chief Justice.”

The annulled presidential August 8 elections, according to the Supreme Court ruling, was faulted on failure by the IEBC to do due diligence in transmission.

The Jubilee MPs want the complementary tally transmission process (manual) strengthened such that in a situation where the electronic result transmission fails, the process is done manually.

Since the annulment of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s win early this month, Uhuru Kenyatta has since maintained that the ballots would instead form a basic component for the number of votes cast in the August 8 General Election.

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