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Members of the National Assembly are today expected to elect chairpersons and vice chairs of House committees.

This comes a month after the House resolved the impasse of who constitutes Majority and Minority in the House that had delayed the commencement of business following their swearing in a month ago.

The election follows intense lobbying that has been going on since Thursday when they formally constituted the committees after President William Ruto met MPs from the Kenya Kwanza side and endorsed the list of persons to sit in the committees.

“If you were here on Thursday evening and part of Friday you would have noticed that those proposed to chair the committees were not resting, they were all over asking members to propose and second them,” said one of the members who did not want to be named.

There are 44 committees in the 13th Parliament – 20 departmental committees and 24 select committees – with eight being reserved for the minority side and four others are only chaired by either the Speaker or Deputy Speaker.  The current Parliament has 11 more committees than the previous one.

The National Assembly is expected to approve membership to various House committees in line with the Standing Orders.

The election comes after Speaker Moses Wetang’ula directed that committees be facilitated to conduct their elections.

The committee on Administration and National Security conducted its elections on Friday, with Gabriel Tongoyo (Narok West) elected the chair and Saku MP Did Raso vice chair.  The committee is set to vet Inspector General of Police nominee Japeth Koome next week.

“Committees will be facilitated from Monday to have inaugural meetings. The committee responsible for vetting of IG will be facilitated as early as tomorrow morning, to elect the chair and vice chair so that together with the Senate they can sit to vet the nominee for the position of IG,” Wetang’ula said last week.

The IG nominee will face the Senate Standing Committee on National Security, Defence and Foreign Relations and National Assembly’s Committee on Administration and Internal Affairs.

The chairpersons of the two committees will co-chair the joint sittings with the quorum being the respective quorums of each of the committees.