President dissolves parliament

Outgoing Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi on Friday dissolved the country's parliament, effectively signalling his plans to call general elections before the end of the year. The elections will mark the end of Moi's 24 year rule. The state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) broadcast a two-line presidential statement which said parliament had officially been dissolved. It gave no further details. Under current Kenyan law, the power to dissolve parliament and call elections rests with the incumbent president. Once parliament is dissolved, elections must take place within a maximum of 90 days. Moi, who is constitutionally barred from seeking re-election after completing his second five-year term under the multiparty constitution introduced in 1992, had earlier in the year hinted that elections would be held in December. The dissolution of parliament - Kenya's eighth since independence - comes barely a day after parliament passed a controversial finance bill which the government introduced in the House two weeks ago. Philip Kichana, an independent analyst told IRIN on Friday that the bill sought - among other issues - to consolidate funding for the ruling party, KANU's, presidential candidate and write off debts on loans taken by powerful KANU officials. "I don't think this is news. It was expected from the way things were moving," Kichana said. "The government needed to authorise money to spend during the elections," he said. "It also gave them the means with which to write off loans for the big boys. Now we are going to see the real politics." Observers also expressed fear that the dissolution of parliament could derail the country's ongoing constitutional review process. Parliamentarians were to comprise the majority of the stakeholders at a constitutional conference, scheduled to start on 28 October, to make recommendations on a new draft constitution ahead of its approval, Kichana told IRIN. "Without MPs, things might take a different direction," he noted. However, Patrick Lumumba, secretary of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission, the body set up last year to rewrite the constitution, said the commission already had a "plan B" in case parliament was dissolved before the conference took place. "We are going ahead with plans to give Kenyans a new constitution as planned, regardless of the dissolution of parliament," he said, according to the 'Daily Nation' newspaper on Friday.