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Kenyatta signs controversial security law

Saturday December 20 2014
Bill

President Uhuru Kenyatta signs the Security Laws (Amendment) Bill at State House, Nairobi. Looking on are Deputy President William Ruto and Speaker of the National Assembly Justin Muturi. PHOTO | FILE

Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta has signed into law a fast-tracked, controversial security Bill that was passed by legislators in a heated parliamentary session that morphed into a fistfight on Thursday.

During the debate, politicians traded punches over the Bill, which President Kenyatta says will help him fight terrorism but critics say will roll back the gains made in civil liberties and free speech over the past two and a half decades. The two sides in the debate were seen hurling insults at and wrestling one another on the floor of the House.

Chaos erupted in the House when the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) politicians ripped apart copies of the Bill and hurled them at the Speaker, forcing the vote to be delayed for several hours. Emotions ran high and some MPs from the president’s coalition, Jubilee, exchanged blows with opposition members who had been attempting to block legislative work the whole afternoon.

Live transmission of proceedings in the House was terminated as the debate turned violent. A senator from the CORD coalition had his trousers ripped when the president’s men stormed the Speakers Gallery where chants of “a Luta continua” from opposition Senators were growing louder.

The CORD coalition described the events on Thursday as “a monumental battle” signalling “the beginning of another phase of the struggle to liberate Kenya.”

Riot police deployed in the streets of Nairobi cordoned off parliament and fired shots to disperse demonstrators and civil society activists calling for an “Occupy Parliament” movement against the new laws.

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An attempt to forge consensus flopped on Wednesday evening, after CORD legislators walked out of a bipartisan ad hoc committee formed to avert a divisive vote the next day.

The new laws abrogate key constitutional checks and balances on presidential powers, lengthen the amount of time terror suspects can be detained, and impose harsh penalties on the media and social media users for distributing material that threatens national security.

Some positive changes were made to the Bill such as removing the clause giving the Cabinet Secretary for Internal Affairs the authority to decide when and where public demonstrations are to be held. The National Intelligence Service will now need a court warrant to tap any phone conversations or search private premises, which must be directly linked to terrorism.

While the service still retains the powers to arrest terror suspects, the new law requires the spy agency to hand over such suspects to the police.

The spy agency’s hitherto blank cheque to do “anything necessary” to avert a threat to security has been removed, and now it is required to conduct all its operations, including covert ones, “within the law.” But tough laws that greatly expand the president’s powers over national security affairs and those that infringe on the civil and political liberties enjoyed by Kenyans are still retained.

“The law in its present form will hand the president sweeping autocratic powers to silence dissent and monopolise the political landscape,” the CORD coalition said in a statement.

President Kenyatta will now have a free hand in appointing and dismissing the Inspector General of Police, and he is expected to soon start looking for potential candidates for the top job in the police service after signing the Bill into law.

A clause that threatens to limit press freedom when reporting on terrorism and national security issues has been retained. According to this law, an individual is liable to a fine of $11,000 if he or she “publishes or broadcasts any information that undermines” national security. For media houses, this attracts a fine of $55,000.

Media companies will also have to check with the National Police Service before publishing any material relating to terrorism.
According to legal experts, this law effectively makes the Kenya police an “Information Commissar,” since no information or images of a victim of terrorism may be published without the prior approval of the police.

In his address from State House, Nairobi, after signing the Bill into law on Friday afternoon, President Kenyatta said the new security laws do not contradict the Bill of Rights.

He added that there is nothing in the new law that goes against the Bill of Rights or any provisions of the Constitution. Its intent, he said, is to protect the lives and property of all citizens, adding that the new laws instead give “security actors a firm institutional framework for coherent co-operation.

“For the first time, we now have a law that focuses on prevention and disruption of threats,” he said.

But the opposition was not amused with how the government hastily tabled the Bill in parliament and signed it into law in under 10 days.

“Our position was, and our position remains that what was purportedly passed in parliament yesterday is a bad law,” the coalition said in a press briefing on Friday after the president signed the Bill into law.

“What the president has done is laughable. What took place in the national assembly was not an exercise in legislation [referring to the chaotic manner in which the Bill was passed],” said Bony Khalwale, a Senator affiliated to the CORD coalition.

He also suggested that the president had flouted the law by signing a Bill that was not debated by the country’s Senate. “The president knows we have a bicameral parliament and the Constitution demands that, for a Bill to become law, it must be passed by both Houses of parliament,” Mr Khalwale told The EastAfrican.

Senator Khalwale said his coalition is now preparing a petition to be filed in the Supreme Court this week. Kenya’s Ombudsman Otiende Amolo told The East-African that while the manner in which the Bill was passed was unfortunate, “People can petition the court to test the constitutionality of the new laws.”

The Kenya Security Laws (Amendment) Bill published on December 10 introduces more than 100 changes in 21 existing pieces of legislation.

“The haste, the gusto and the last minute dash in which this has been brought makes it highly suspicious,” CORD said.

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