The National Assembly will not be recalled for a special sitting to consider President William Ruto’s reservations on the now abandoned contentious Finance Bill, 2024 that triggered mass protests and a breach of Parliament Buildings on Tuesday.
The National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetangula, who received President Ruto’s memorandum on his reservation on refusing to assent to the Finance Bill on Wednesday evening is set to notify each of the 349 MPs on the implication of the President's action.
The House rules require that if a message is received from the President, at a time when Parliament is not in session, the Speaker shall forthwith cause the message to be transmitted to every member and shall report the message to the House on the day they next sit.
This means that the earliest the National Assembly will consider the President's memorandum asking MPs to delete the entire provisions of the Finance Bill, 2024 is July 22 after the House took recess on Thursday.
“When a message from the President is read, the message shall be deemed to have been laid before the House and the Speaker may either direct that the message be dealt with forthwith, or appoint a day for the consideration of the message, or refer the message to the relevant Committee of the House for consideration,” Standing Order 42(3) states.
The legislators took a month-long recess on Thursday morning after MPs approved a motion for the deployment of the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) to help the police quell unrest after youth-led protests saw the invasion of Parliament.
Dr Ruto on Wednesday conceded to pressure from young protesters and the concerns of Kenyans and asked the National Assembly to withdraw the Bill in its entirety.
The Bill would have automatically become law within 14 days if the President did not return it to the House with a memorandum recommending its deletion.
The recommendation to delete all clauses means that the Bill is technically dead.
The President’s message, which was received by Mr Wetangula on Wednesday evening, has been deemed to have been committed to the Finance and National Planning Committee for consideration.
The committee, chaired by Molo MP Kuria Kimani is expected to consider the President's memorandum and file a report when the House reconvenes on July 22, 2024.
MPs will be required to vote on the President's recommendation to delete the Bill in its entirety by voting on it clause by clause.
It will require an MP seeking to retain a clause in the Bill or overturn the President's memorandum to raise 233 MPs or a two-thirds majority.
Once the entire clauses of the Bill are deleted, they can only be reintroduced after six months.
The Bill was to become law by June 30 and take effect from July 1, 2024 and run to June 30, 2025.
“I decline to assent to the Finance Bill 2024, and refer the Bill for reconsideration by the National Assembly with the recommendation for the deletion of all clauses thereof,” Dr Ruto said in the memorandum notifying Parliament of his reservations about revenue raising law.
The government was banking on the passage of the Bill to raise Sh347 billion in the financial year 2024/25 to plug the deficit on Dr Ruto’s Sh3.92 trillion budget.
Dr Ruto had last week climbed down and accepted the National Assembly’s Finance and National Planning proposals to delete the proposed imposition of value-added tax (VAT) on bread, 2.5 percent motor vehicle levy, 25 percent excise duty on edible oil and the controversial eco levy imposed on plastic packaging materials at the rate of Sh150 per kilogramme.
If the MPs vote to delete all clauses of the Finance Bill 2024 as proposed by Dr Ruto, the government will proceed with the revenue-raising measures for the 2023/24 financial year.
Kenyan youths have taken to the streets since last week in a huge campaign to urge MPs not to approve the punitive Finance Bill that proposed additional taxes and levies on individuals and businesses, but the MPs remained adamant, passing the Bill on Tuesday amid protests occurring across 35 of the 47 counties.
In Nairobi, the protests which saw day-long running battles culminated in a fast-in-history event of breaching Parliament Buildings, just moments after lawmakers had approved the contentious Bill through its Third Reading.
