The term of parliament is four years; not five!
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
10 March 2013
Picking up from where
I stopped last week, J. P. Kamau notes that after 2017, the next general
election will be in 2021 and not 2022 as widely expected. Kamau writes:
“…there is a problem: if we go by your reasoning then the next elections
after the 2017 one will be in 2021 which will be after exactly 4 years.
Reason being if we give the legislators who will be in office at that
time their rightful and mandatory 5 years, we will have them up to 2022
August. The 2nd Tuesday in August 2022 will be in 6th year!”
If you are lost, here is a quick reminder: our constitution states that
“A
general election of members of Parliament shall be held on the second
Tuesday in August in every fifth year”. Counting the years from 4th
March 2013, we found that the next general election should be held on
8th August 2017.
Kamau continued the counting from 8th August 2017 in order to determine
the date of the general election after 2017. The count goes like this:
the first year runs from 8th August 2017 to 7th August 2018; the second
one from 8th August 2018 to 7th August 2019; …and so one up to the fifth
one that starts on 8th August 2021 and ends on 7th August 2022.
From my phone calendar, I find that the 8th of August 2021 will be a
Sunday. Therefore, the first Tuesday in August in the fifth year will be
the on 10th day of that month and the second one will be on the 17th.
Consequently, the general election after that of 2017 will be on 17th
August 2021. But if you count the duration starting from 8th August 2017
and ending on 17th August 2021, it comes to only four years and ten
days!
I agree with Kamau’s argument up to that point. Indeed, I have
extrapolated further and found that, after 2021, the next general
election will be on 26th August 2025 – another four-year term. But after
2025, something interesting happens: the term ends on 6th August 2030,
which is almost five years long – just twenty days short!
However, I do not
agree with Kamau that legislators have “a rightful and mandatory”
five-year term. There is no such provision anywhere in the current or
the former constitution and I don’t even think that “Wanjiku” intended
for it to be there. In my view, “Wanjiku” simply didn’t want elected
officials to serve for more than five years before seeking her new
mandate.
My first thought after reading Kamau’s email was that we need to amend the constitution to make sure that terms are approximately five years each; but on second thought, I don’t think it is necessary. There is nothing wrong with being a unique country where the term of parliament fluctuates between four and five years!
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