Court cannot declare the Majority in Parliament, Speaker Wetangula declares

National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetangula has insisted that the High Court ruling issued last week, which invalidated the determination of Kenya Kwanza as the majority party in the House, did not directly declare any political entity as the majority.

Addressing the House on Tuesday when lawmakers convened to discuss the ramifications of the ruling, Wetangula clarified that the court’s decision merely quashed his earlier direction and did not actually declare any side as the majority in Parliament.

According to Wetangula, it is only the National Assembly Speaker who has the authority to declare who holds the majority in the House.

“The judgement quashed the direction of the Speaker on the majority and minority. It never declared who is the majority,” Wetangula said.  

“It is not the court to declare the majority. It is the Speaker of this House, and you better know that. It is the Speaker of the House to declare the majority.”

To push his point home, Wetangula emphasized that the court’s decision simply returned the situation in Parliament to the "status quo ante," meaning that the status of the majority party is now to be determined by the House.

“The upshot of the judgement of the court …in law we say we go back to the status quo ante…when you go back to the status quo ante then the House has to make a decision and a finding on who the majority is. The court has not declared any party a majority in this House; read the judgement carefully,” he said.

“We have gone back to the status quo ante… as to who is majority, the Speaker will make a finding.”

Wetangula further urged MPs to engage with the matter based on the facts and law, and not on unverified information

"Don’t speak from what you are hearing in the air,” he stated.

According to the High Court ruling, Wetangula violated the Constitution by declaring Kenya Kwanza the majority in Parliament.

The ruling stemmed from a decision made by the Speaker on October 6, 2022, when 14 members from various parties were reassigned to Kenya Kwanza, tipping the balance in favour of the coalition and enabling it to claim majority status.

However, the court found that the Speaker had no justifiable basis for the reassignments and quashed the decision that had declared Kenya Kwanza as the majority party.

According to Speaker Wetangula’s determination, Kenya Kwanza had 179 members in the National Assembly, while the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition party had 157.

However, official documents from the Registrar of Political Parties indicated that as of April 21, 2022, Azimio comprised 26 political parties, whereas Kenya Kwanza had only 15.