Members of Parliament received a rude shock after the Court of appeal ordered them to keep their hands off the Constituency Development Fund (CDF).
Justices Erastus Githinji, Hannah Okwengu and GBM Kariuki ruled out the legislators’ participation in decision-making or deployment of staff to manage the billions disbursed from the Treasury per year.
The judges concurred with the High Court’s earlier verdict, affirming that they had established that the control powers the legislators awarded themselves on CDF are a reserve of the Executive, hence they were unconstitutional.
The court further ascertained that the powers to appoint CDF staff can only be done by a Cabinet Secretary or the CDF board.
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All other roles which had been set for the MPs, according to the court, should be executed by a Sub-County Administrator.
The ruling read in part: “The Executive functions performed by the MP could properly have been assigned to the sub-county administrator as an officer of national Government.
“The appointment of MPs to perform purely Executive duties of enforcing CDF violates the Constitution and principles of Separation of Powers and of National Values and Governance,” it continued.
The legislators had put up a spirited fight in order to retain the lucrative kitty under their dockets they had argued that the money was not meant to take care of issues under the counties.
Last year, the High Court declared that CDF was unconstitutional and a three-judge bench composed of Justice Isaac Lenaola, David Majanja and Mumbi Ngugi on February 20, 2016, invalidated the CDF Act.
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However, the legislators were forced to amend the CDF Act to create the National Government Constituency Development Fund Act (NGCDFA) to ensure they still had a hand in the kitty.
