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{
"id": 1462382,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1462382/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": {
"id": 13165,
"legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
"slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
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"content": "messages, for example, that the Speaker just decided on change of leadership. You can find even a Speaker of a county assembly forming a select committee on their own. Most Members of County Assemblies (MCAs) are serving their first term. As such, it is their first time to interact with a legislative body. Therefore, they do not understand some of the challenges. The Senate is supposed to play the big brother role and be a mentor to our county assemblies to make sure that they come of age. There are issues of manipulation of budget processes. What powers do county assemblies have in amending budget proposals that are sent to county assemblies? The Senate needs to take its rightful place. It is impossible to do that with all our 47 county assemblies. What do you do? You work better with the rest of the 47 county assemblies through the CAF, so that when you have a sitting with their leadership and when they have a competent secretariat like what we have here in the Senate, they can guide our county assemblies."
},
{
"id": 1462383,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1462383/?format=api",
"text_counter": 231,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": {
"id": 13165,
"legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
"slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
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"content": "We look forward to sending Director Ruge here to train them. This man is a repository of legislative procedures here in the Senate. The same knowledge needs to be passed to our county assemblies. How do you transfer and pass that knowledge? It is not with the visits that we get here every other afternoon. For example, the Speaker reads that today we have visitors from Tana River County who have come to learn about the operations of the Senate. Surely, we are taking that joke too far. You need a proper institution established by law, that Members of County Assemblies (MCAs) can learn from. They can also send their lead clerks, lead legal counsels or fiscal analysts to interact with those at the Senate and copy the best practices. That is why it is important to anchor County Assemblies Forum (CAF) in law and ensure that the same way Council of Governors (CoGs) gets funding from the national Government and the various counties, the same is done with the CAF, so that our county assemblies can rise to the level that was envisioned when we set up devolution. Madam Temporary Speaker, everything is about perception. People have learned how to tell their stories. We in the devolution family, must also learn how to do this. I speak about this so openly because this is something I appreciate. Allow me to digress a bit but this is in relation to the point that I am trying to canvass on the Floor. People tell their stories in a different way. I do not know what it will take for Kenyans to know, learn and appreciate that how you portray your country to other people reflects on you. Madam Temporary Speaker, there are riots, in the United Kingdom (UK) that are going on right now. I have been keenly watching and following how the BritishBroadcasting Corporation (BBC) is covering those riots. Compare that to what our local media does here when there are challenges in our country, and you can understand what people know about their country. I was checking to see whether the Cable News Network (CNN) will look for a British journalist and send them to show a burning motor vehicle, the same way it does with Larry Madowo every time there are problems in the Republic of Kenya. I have not seen it because people know that it matters how you tell the story of your country. I hope our journalists can take time to follow and see how the BBC or SkyNews are taking time to analyze the contentious issues or condemning those that are using extra-legal means to pass their point. These are things that you will never hear in the riots or challenges that we have been facing as a country. It is all about perception and appreciating that nobody will ever do your job of ensuring that even as you pass your point, you do not need to beat yourself too hard or try to paint how things are bad in order to appear intelligent or assume that you can do better. This is our country. The good that exists in Kenya is for all of us and vice versa . We are duty-bound to make it better. I hope we could learn about that. That is why I felt it was important to mention that in relation to what CAF needs to do for our county assemblies. I appreciate that county assemblies have come of age. Previously, all we used to hear about, especially in the 2013 to 2017 cycle of devolution, was that there was a fight in this county assembly, or they were impeaching this one or the other. In fact, there was a bold headline one afternoon, and I remember us discussing here, where citizens were saying, we should disband this thing called county assemblies."
},
{
"id": 1462384,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1462384/?format=api",
"text_counter": 232,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": {
"id": 13165,
"legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
"slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
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"content": "However, that was then. The debates in the county assemblies that we have in present day Kenya are just as good as the ones you would get even in a national Legislature like the Senate or the National Assembly of the Republic of Kenya, if not better even in certain instances. Even the quality of legislators that are being sent there; citizens are beginning to appreciate that a representative needs to be somebody who knows how to pass on your issues, represent and feel with you when you have challenges and speak out for your sake. Therefore, that sets the basis of why it will be important for us to support our county assemblies and ensure that they live up to the expectation that we set out. That is why it will be important for CAF to be set up in law, just as we are proposing. I know CoG and CAF have proposed amendments. I saw the presentation and have seen letters in my office from both institutions on how they want this Bill to be enriched. I look forward to seeing how the Committee, when they eventually table their report before this House, will enrich this particular legislation. It is a good start. Let us conclude on this business and send it to the National Assembly to ensure that we do one important assignment to the family of devolution that looks up to us as the lead institution in fostering and nurturing devolution in our country. With those many remarks, I request my senior, the Senator for Kakamega County and the Senate Majority Whip, Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale to second this. I thank you."
},
{
"id": 1462385,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1462385/?format=api",
"text_counter": 233,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Veronica Maina",
"speaker_title": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Thank you, Senator. Proceed, Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale."
},
{
"id": 1462386,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1462386/?format=api",
"text_counter": 234,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 170,
"legal_name": "Bonny Khalwale",
"slug": "bonny-khalwale"
},
"content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, I want to thank the Senate Majority Leader for ably moving this Amendment Bill. The issue of intergovernmental relations is too important to be left vague the way it is. There is a greater need for us to explicitly provide for it through the kind of legislation that the Senate Majority Leader has just moved. I fully support the reasons he has used to move this Bill. Madam Temporary Speaker, when I look at the Bill specifically, I have very few comments, which to my mind, I think are important. The first one is on Page 153 of the Bill. In Clause 3 (4), the Bill provides that a person shall be qualified for appointment as a chairperson of the agency if such a person holds a master's degree from a university recognized in Kenya. Madam Temporary Speaker, seeing what is going on in other offices vis-a-vis the offices in the elective organs, namely the National Assembly, the Senate, and the Executive, we must apply the principle of what is good for the goose must always be good for the gander. I have seen Cabinet Secretaries serving this country without degrees. Here we are setting this high standard for this chairperson. This chairperson will be reporting to people who are supposed to be either equally or better qualified. Therefore, if we want to use education as a measure to allow people to serve in office, then let us stick to it faithfully to the extent that during the interviews, this person would be forced to utter his testimonials, which will be vetted. In my view, I would like the same to apply to all other offices, including the Cabinet Secretaries. I sit back and wonder, 60 years since the advent of education in Kenya, should we still be permitting people to lecture us on how they have limited or no"
},
{
"id": 1462387,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1462387/?format=api",
"text_counter": 235,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 170,
"legal_name": "Bonny Khalwale",
"slug": "bonny-khalwale"
},
"content": "education, and are proud to be serving in big offices or have been considered for those offices? Madam Temporary Speaker, if you are a passenger in an airplane which was currently airborne and somebody told you that the pilot in the cockpit is illiterate, how would you feel? To fly an aircraft, you must be competent. Surely flying an aircraft is a smaller calling than what is expected of us when we are in constitutional offices. I, again, beg all of us to agree that education is important and it should be applied equally as a standard. Madam Temporary Speaker, Clause 4(b) states that the chairperson should meet the requirements of Chapter 6 of the Constitution. Again, we should stop allowing the provisions of this Chapter in our Constitution and subjecting it to just lip service. It cannot be lip service. People must be subjected to Chapter 6 if we want to fight corruption in this country. For the last two weeks, we had 15 people undergoing vetting painstakingly through a Committee of this House called the Standing Committee on Finance and Budget. Now, when the same people go into office, they will find that the people who were vetting them are less competent than them. We should respect Chapter 6. In the same Clause, they are saying that the chairperson should have a distinguished career in their respective fields. Fine. When you just say distinguished career without specifying how long someone has been in that career, you are making it open-ended and also creating an opportunity whereby, people will start thinking that the longer the distinguished career is, the more attractive it is. For example, we have young people from the university - I have such young people in my family, my own children - with two or three years of experience. They are perfect professionals. I look at my children and I say that anybody denying these young people from serving the country because they do not have those many years of experience, is actually denying qualified Kenyans an opportunity to serve us even better. Madam Temporary Speaker, Clause 5 provides for the membership of this board. Clause 5(b) says that the member should have knowledge and experience of at least 10 years in matters relating to the devolved functions. I hope to amend this provision so that we reduce it from ten years to three years of experience on matters of devolution so that, one; to attract young professionals from the university to get employment. Two, not to unnecessarily favour older members of society in hogging jobs that can be equally done by the youth. Three, this is also in recognition to the fact that even devolution itself has not been there for too long, it has just been there for 11 years. So, where will you get all these professionals who have 10 years of experience in matters devolution? There are not that many because the principle has been around for a very short time. The Bill also provides that the person and the members of the Intergovernmental Agency shall serve on a full-time basis. Fine but let us reflect on this. Before we legislate that an agency like this one serves on a full-time basis, let us dissect the functions and ask ourselves; can these functions be done on a quarterly, half-yearly or whatever basis other than full-time? This is so that we save the high cost of running Government. You know the experience we have today with the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC). Why is a Commission that just sits to decide how much people"
},
{
"id": 1462388,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1462388/?format=api",
"text_counter": 236,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 170,
"legal_name": "Bonny Khalwale",
"slug": "bonny-khalwale"
},
"content": "should be paid serve on a full-time basis? Let us assign functions to these agencies, dissect them and justify the need for us to make it a full-time agency. Madam Temporary Speaker, you are a lawyer and you know there exists the Law Reform Commission (LRC) in this country. I am yet to hear or see proposals in the National Assembly or this Senate from the LRC on legislation. The LRC was put there to purposely modernise our laws in resonance with the new Constitution and update our laws so that we migrate from how the laws had been structured under the old constitution to the new Constitution. However, the LRC is just there, not bringing those proposals. It, therefore, calls for this debate. I do not want to speak for too long; let me just make one last comment in seconding this Bill. Clause 20(a) speaks to funding of the council. We are being told that: “(a) annual subscriptions by county governments; and (b) such monies as may be lawfully granted or donated to the Council”. If we leave it this way, we run a risk of having an agency that is facing a drought of funds and its functions will be poorly carried out. If it is an intergovernmental agency, why are we asking the county governments alone to make those subscriptions? After asking the county governments to make the subscriptions, we must also ask the national Government, because it is intergovernmental. It means that the national Government and the county government should both make subscriptions. Madam Temporary Speaker, with those few remarks, I wish to second. I thank you."
},
{
"id": 1462389,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1462389/?format=api",
"text_counter": 237,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Veronica Maina",
"speaker_title": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Thank you, Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale."
},
{
"id": 1462390,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1462390/?format=api",
"text_counter": 238,
"type": "scene",
"speaker_name": "",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "(Question proposed)"
},
{
"id": 1462391,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1462391/?format=api",
"text_counter": 239,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Veronica Maina",
"speaker_title": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker": null,
"content": "I now call upon Senators to make their contributions now. Sen. Olekina Ledama, proceed."
}
]
}