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{
    "id": 943721,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/943721/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 474,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "The Deputy Speaker",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "tells Parliament in a compulsive manner what to do, what not to do and when or how to do it. The other sister arms of Government; the Executive and the Judiciary, must respect that legal reality. It is baffling, therefore, to say the least, to hear that there have been attempts by the Judiciary to gag this House from undertaking its constitutional and legal duties as the arm of Government that is the people’s representatives. There are at least three jurisprudential reasons why injunction of Parliament by courts is not constitutionally and legally tenable. First, courts injuncting Parliament is a frontal and deadly attack on the substratum of the hallowed legal doctrine of separation of powers, the bedrock upon which our constitutional order is raised. Separation of powers is now a trite and settled centerpiece of the Constitution and the common law system. In its most basic form, separation of powers affirms that governmental functions in a democracy are performed best when not concentrated on a single authority or arm of Government, but are instead dispensed among different branches. As Hon. Kenneth Marende, Speaker of the National Assembly of Kenya then aptly ruled in respect of the Adoption of the Report on Mau Complex on 3rd September 2009: “Power thus divided prevents the absolutism of the Executive, the possible anarchy of Parliament or the presumption of the Judiciary”. Speaker Marende continued thus: “The operation of the principle both separates and blends powers so that each branch serves as a check and balance on the powers of the others. It ensures the protection of the rule of law and secures the fundamental rights of the individual. The principle of separation of powers has a superficial simplicity, but is in reality, inherently complex.” Thus, the prima facie simplicity of the doctrine of separation of powers is an allure to authorities and institutions keen on the natural tendency of trying to expand their jurisdiction. That it is natural for arms of Government to try and expand their jurisdiction unless and until checkmated by the arm of Government victim of such expansionist tendency was flagged by no less a person than the ideological progenitor of the separation of powers doctrine, the French Scholar, Baron Charles de Montesquieu, in his oft-cited words in his seminal work: ‘The Spirit of the Laws.’ He said, and I quote:"
}