The “forceful” passage of the Security Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2014 under acrimonious circumstances has put the performance of National Assembly Speaker Justine Muturi into sharp scrutiny. More than ever before, critics are now questioning his supposed impartiality, prudence and generally his capacity to steer a largely divided House in the next three years. CORD leaders like MPs Junet Mohammed and Ababu Namwamba have described the Speaker as a star player for the Jubilee side in Parliament in Thursday’s proceedings while his nemesis Senior Counsel Ahmednasir Abdullahi is celebrating alleged vindication of his prophecy that “Muturi is unfit for the office”. Many questions have since emerged overto his role in exacerbating the acrimony, failure to send out errant members who were clearly out of order, his rejection of CORD’s plea for an informal session and his persistence in conducting the affairs of the House blind to obvious acrimony. But Muturi himself remains stoic, defiant and unapologetic over Thursday’s turn of events which he says were forced by a party which was determined to abort the conduct of the agenda of the day. In an interview with The Standard on Sunday, Muturi defended his conduct on Thursday saying he did his best under “very difficult circumstances”. “When you preside over processes or events such as these, there will be winners and losers. As a person who has been in the Judiciary for so long, trust me, I am least bothered when people make complaints as the ones being made now. I did what any reasonable Speaker in my position would have done,” Muturi said. See Also: Anti-terror law a colossal mistake and will erode the gains made on reforms He said he was privy to all the scheming that went on at the CORD side to try and scuttle the debate on the Bill. He said he was even shown Whatsapp messages of CORD MPs scheming to derail the order of the business of a House he had convened. “Surely, as a convener of the sitting, what was I supposed to do? Sit pretty as the schemes materialised to script? I can assure you, for the CORD members, it was not all about procedures, amendments or the law itself,” he said. Muturi said that it was “pretty obvious” to him that CORD together with “other outsiders” were determined to scuttle the process, especially after they exhausted all opportunities which they would have harped onto to scuttle the process legally. He said as the presiding officer, he ensured the alternative views of all stakeholders, including the Commission on Implementation of the Constitution (CIC), members of public and CORD were incorporated in the process. “I could not have allowed myself to be held to ransom in spite of all the measures I had put in place to ensure everyone was satisfied. I must remain focused on the greater good of the greatest majority even as I let the disinterested few have their say,” Muturi said.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 08:06:54 +0000
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