The Star on 9 March ran a story headed: “MPs took cash to remove CBK Governor Name”. There is nothing novel here . Time and again MPs have been accused of taking bribes in return for their votes—including by senior parliamentarians, who know these things. Since this is Kenya, we can take it for granted that money changed hands and the Governor survived a proper scrutiny. And since this is Kenya, the voting was also heavily in...

The election date issue, already complicated, is likely to become more confusing. The High Court’s decision on the date of the election has been challenged before the Court of Appeal, just as parliament gears up to debate amending the constitution. The amendments would increase the size of both houses of the legislature (to ensure at least one third women) and fix the date of the next and future elections as the third Monday in December....

Here we go again: Parliament has to rush bills through because they think that otherwise they risk premature dissolution. At the same time the Minister of Justice reminds us that many of the bills that were passed in a similar rush in August last year were poorly drafted and even unconstitutional.Sitting until midnight is no way to get good legislation passed. The legislation that needs to be passed by February 27th is mostly on land or devolu...

The Constitution says that Parliament must pass necessary laws to implement the Constitution, and for this purpose, “the Attorney-General, in consultation with the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution, shall prepare the relevant Bills for tabling before Parliament” (Article 261).But the Committee of Experts seems to have lost sight of the need to be precise in its drafting and section 5 of the Constitution&rs...