Imenti North MP Rahim Dawood speaking on the floor of the National Assembly on September 25, 2025. /SCREENGRAB
Imenti North MP Rahim Dawood has questioned the purpose of Parliament’s legislative role, arguing that the President’s power to veto or amend bills undermines the work of the House.
Speaking in the National Assembly on Thursday, Dawood said bills go through a rigorous process in both Houses only to be rejected outright or returned with presidential reservations.
He was reacting during debate on the President’s reservations on the Cancer Prevention and Control (Amendment) Bill.
The Health Committee had proposed to the committee of the whole House deletion of several clauses, saying they had been overtaken by events due to the President’s objections.
Dawood, who sponsored the bill, lamented that it had taken two years to reach the committee of the whole House, only for most of its provisions to be scrapped.
“It is like there is no point in making any laws in this House because if the President’s reservations have to be taken into account, what’s the meaning of law-making?” he asked.
“It takes two years to make one bill, go through the National Assembly, go through the Senate and then come here and you are told it has already been overtaken by events,” he added.
He recalled that when drafting the bill, there were no rules requiring health-related legislation to be subjected to presidential approval.
“It should be mindful of this House that this is not the way we make laws. If this is what we are going to be doing, then I think there is no point in making any bills. Let them come from the Executive then we just pass them,” he said.
However, Dagoreti South MP John Kiarie defended the President’s reservations, noting the bill was overtaken by the enactment of four critical Universal Health Coverage laws.
the Primary Health Care Act, 2023, the Digital Health Act, 2023, the Facility Improvement Financing Act, 2023 and the Social Health Insurance Act, 2023.
“Hon Rahim, your frustrations can be in the time that we (take to) process the bills, but not in the process of law-making. The President is very right and, in his place, to place these reservations because the provisions that were being covered in this bill are already being covered by other laws that we have made post-facto after this bill came to the House,” he said.
Senior Counsel Otiende Amollo sympathised with Dawood but reminded MPs that they still hold the ultimate power to overturn presidential reservations with a two-thirds majority.
“If we were so convicted, we have raised two-thirds before. The Hon Dawood should whip all of us to raise two-thirds to override the reservations,” he said.
Amollo nonetheless acknowledged longstanding problems in how legislations have been processed in the House for years now.
He noted that while the constitution gives the President the right to make observations that can only be overturned by a two-thirds vote, successive presidents have gone further by amending the Acts themselves.
“That’s the impropriety and in my view that is what ought to be addressed,” he said.
“But in substance, I sympathise with honourable Dawood but such is life.”
