Kidu welcomes contempt probe

By JEFFREY ELAPA
OPPOSITION leader Dame Carol Kidu has welcomed Speaker Jeffery Nape’s intention to investigate her for contempt of parliamentary procedures.
Dame Carol said that she had nothing to do with a recent court proceeding taken out by the Morobe Governor Luther Wenge.
And her action to go to the media had not been influenced  by Wenge.
“I have a copy of the judicial conduct bill as presented to parliament and passed by government but opposed by the opposition as an unconstitutional subsidiary law,” she said.
“I also have copies of two judicial conduct acts duly signed and certified, one on March 30 and the other on April 4.
“To my understanding,  once a bill is certified as an act of parliament, the only way to change it is to take it back to parliament for amendment or repeal. This has not been done.
“What gives someone the power to just say ‘forget the first one’.”
She said it was already an act of parliament so procedurally it should go back to parliament.
Dame Carol said the fact that it was not gazetted should not be relevant and if a mistake was made in the certification process then parliament should sort out the mistake.
“To not insist on this is a gross abuse of procedures and once again a dangerous political precedent.
“As legislators we must be vigilant that nothing happens behind the scenes because the process of ‘fixing it’ behind the scenes takes our power as the ‘supreme legislators’ away from us and puts it in the hands of people who do the certification,” she said.