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{
    "id": 566479,
    "url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/566479/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 203,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Wakhungu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1889,
        "legal_name": "Chrisantus Wamalwa Wakhungu",
        "slug": "chrisantus-wamalwa-wakhungu"
    },
    "content": "The Political Parties Act is critical as far as the management of political parties is concerned. I will go straight to the Memorandum of Objects, the intention and the gist of this amendment. You will agree with me that political parties are the institutions that people use as far as democracy is concerned. When you look at Section 23 of the Act, it establishes the Political Parties Fund. This Fund is supposed to be used for political parties in terms of running their programmes. Unfortunately, you realise that the threshold that was given was very high and many political parties, which are national in nature, did not qualify to get this funding. Therefore, their programmes are impeded by lack of funds. In terms of compliance, every political party must have a minimum of 24 offices across the country. That means that you must have an office in every county or a minimum of 24 offices. All this requires funding. This Fund should help political parties in terms of establishing offices. Before a political party is given a certificate of compliance by the Registrar of Political Parties, the money element that is involved is very high. This has impeded the activities of some political parties and some have even “died” on the way. This amendment is intended to reduce the limitation, so that more political parties can benefit from the Political Parties Fund. The intention of the Political Parties Fund was to remove dictatorship. In the early days of KANU, if a person was a financier of a particular political party, when it came to party nominations, the financiers got direct nominations. You realise that the financiers dictate as to who should be nominated for which positions or elective seats. This negates democracy. Article 38 of the Constitution states that every citizen has a right to join or form a political party and has a right to free and fair elections. So, this funding came in to eliminate people who were funding political parties, so that they do not have that say. Instead, wananchi should have a say when it comes to nominations. Looking at the Political Parties Fund, as per last year, you realise that about two or three parties qualified. If you look at today’s newspapers, a research that was done by the Institute of Education and Democracy shows that the compliance of the parties that got the funding in terms of offices is not 100 per cent. It is about 60 per cent and others 50 per cent. The Auditor-General must move in to audit these political parties, so that public funds that they are given are used for the purpose that is intended. In Clause 2, the Bill seeks to amend Section 25(2)(b) of the Act to reduce the threshold from 5 to 2 per cent, being the minimum number of votes that a political party needs to secure to qualify for funding. Clause 2 of the Bill further seeks to include the requirement that any party that qualifies for funding must have, at least, five elected leaders. When we move to the Committee of the whole House, many Members will want to move amendments. Once we go to the Committee of the whole House, we are going to bring in the amendments, so that political parties can also be given the support that is required for purposes of democracy in this country. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}