(Bloomberg) --

Kenya’s High Court suspended the implementation of the chief justice’s advice to dissolve parliament for failing to enact rules to increase the number of women in public bodies.

Judge Weldon Korir on Thursday ordered a halt to any action to disband the legislature. The implementation of the advice stands suspended pending a hearing of the matter or other court orders, Korir said in a statement emailed by the judiciary.

Chief Justice David Maraga this week sent an advisory note to President Uhuru Kenyatta to dissolve parliament because it hasn’t enacted legislation to ensure that no more than two-thirds of elective and appointive public bodies be of the same gender. Lawmakers were supposed to have implemented the legislation by 2015, five years after Kenya adopted a new constitution that includes the requirement.

“It is in the public interest not to subject the country to parliamentary elections before exhaustively interrogating the constitutionality of the decision of the chief justice,” Korir said.

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