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"content": "deputy. The use of the word “absent” does not mean absent from Kenya. The use of the word “absent” is not equal to “absence from Kenya”. It is a word that is used so that the President can decide what “absence” means. In fact, if you ask me, I see a situation which happened two weeks ago, when the President can actually appoint his deputy to act, not because they are absent from Kenya; but they are in Kenya but absent from work. If a president, for example, wants to go and look at his farm for three days or one week without the pressures of the presidency and the functions that go with the Head of State, he can as well appoint through a gazette notice, the Deputy President, to act as President. Why? Because the President is absent. So this notion that every time the President goes, the Deputy President is acting President is not legally true. For him to be President, there must be an instrument - as it happened on 6th October 2014 – signed by the President conveying the specific powers, the duration of those powers and what jurisdiction the DP will have. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in ordinary circumstances, my assumption is that if the Head of State is outside the country, he may leave the Deputy President as the senior most member of the Executive. But in my view, that Deputy President, unless he has those instruments conveyed to him, is still Deputy President, and not President. The President could be in Namibia or New York and still act as the President of Kenya. It is in this context that the ceremony that took place at Harambee House happened, much to the excitement, bewilderment and confusion in some sections of the population. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this does not happen very often and you can count cases where a President has legally appointed his deputy to act. A case in point is the case of Nelson Mandela in 1994 just immediately after the independence of South Africa. One of his arch rivals was a gentleman called Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). When Mandela became President, he made Buthelezi the Minister for Interior. After a few months, Mandela had to travel and he needed to communicate something to the country. So, he said: “I am going away and Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the Minister for Interior, is going to act as President until I come back.” Of course, the Constitution of South Africa allowed that kind of a legal scenario. In our own Constitution, the President cannot bypass his Deputy even if he wanted to. Other than that, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am only aware of the case of President Nixon in the United States of America (USA) decades ago, but it just does not happen. I think what the President did was a good thing. It democratizes our presidency, it demystifies our presidency; it builds confidence in future, going forward, that those people who want to be President should not just pick anybody to become their deputies for them and once they assume power just to ignore them. So, it is a very assuring thing. It also depersonalizes the State and the presidency so that the presidency becomes an institution and not an individual. So, for me, I see what happened as a celebration of our The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}