The Registrar of Political Parties Anne Nderitu has clarified that the determination of which party constitutes the majority or minority in the National Assembly falls exclusively under the purview of the Speaker.

Speaking on a local media station on March 3, 2025, Nderitu emphasized that her office’s role is limited to providing factual data about coalition memberships.

“The determination on who is majority and minority is squarely on the doorstep of the Speaker. What we do is just provide the state of coalitions, simply telling the Speaker, ‘These are the people who are in this coalition. These other ones are in this coalition. These other ones are free members, they are not in any coalition,'” she explained.

Nderitu further stated that her office responds to periodic requests for information from the National Assembly by supplying current data on party affiliations and coalition agreements.

This information is then left to the Speaker to interpret and apply within the parliamentary context.

“We just provide data upon request under which they have requested at periodic stages. And when we provide that we leave it to the Speaker to interpret the data and make the determination because that is the work of a speaker,” she added.

Constitutional violation

The Registrar’s comments come weeks after the High Court declared that National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetangula violated the Constitution when he made the determination regarding which party or coalition held the majority in the Assembly.

In the judgement issued on February 7, 2025, Justices John Chigiti, Lawrence Mugambi and Jairus Ngaah ruled that the Kenya Kwanza coalition is not the majority party in the National Assembly.

According to the ruling, the majority party coalition party was determined by Kenyans during the August 2022 general elections.

“It is therefore declared that the Honourable speaker determined as contained in his communication to the chair made on October 6, 2022, that the majority and minority in the National Assembly violated the constitution,” part of the ruling read.

On October 6, 2022, Wetangula declared that Kenya Kwanza had 179 members in the House compared to the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition party, which had 157.

However, according to documents from the Registrar of Political Parties as of April 21, 2021, the Azimio coalition consisted of 26 political parties, while Kenya Kwanza had 15.

The court found that the Speaker had no justifiable basis to reassign members to Kenya Kwanza on October 6, 2022, thus declaring it the majority party in the House.

“The speaker can’t fault the registrar of political parties. She could not provide what she did not have. The speaker ought to have exhibited the agreement which were alleged to have been presented during the debate without the post-election coalition agreements he had no basis to this regard,” part of the ruling read.

Wetangula’s response

In response to the High Court ruling, Wetangula stated on February 12, 2025, that he would maintain Kenya Kwanza as the majority coalition.

He explained that while the High Court invalidated his previous declaration, it did not specifically designate which coalition held the majority status.

“The High Court judgment did not designate which side was the majority or the minority; it only annulled my earlier declaration,” he explained.

Wetangula maintained that the leadership of the House would remain unchanged, with Kimani Ichung’wah continuing as Majority Leader and Junet Mohammed as Minority Leader.