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{
    "id": 1017236,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1017236/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 349,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ruaraka, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. T.J. Kajwang’",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2712,
        "legal_name": "Tom Joseph Kajwang'",
        "slug": "kajwang-tom-joseph-francis"
    },
    "content": "As I sit down, I want to advise the President, although I do not have the authority to advise, but I know the President has very good advisors and he will know just as he has read very correctly his functions under the Judicial Service Commission. The Judicial Service Commission said they would take some names to him and the law says that, “he shall”, but he said in public, and I agree with him that if these people thought he is just a figurehead, that his duty is just to convey things, then why do they bother to take that thing to him? It means that this thing called, “shall” means that there is a lot of things that must go through the President’s mind before he does what you call… He is not just a figurehead as you think. It is the Chief Justice himself who has expressed himself that the President does not have a role but that he is just a figurehead. He called him a rubber stamp. I listened to an interview where he called the President a rubber stamp. Well, if he is a rubber stamp, why does he not take that rubber stamp and stamp it and go? This is what therefore is equivalent to where we are here. Yes, it says that, “the President shall dissolve”, but the President has to think about several things before doing that, “shall”. This is where lawyers all over are saying that the Constitution is clear. They will know that there is nothing clear in this Constitution when they come to think about it. The President in doing this “shall” must think about several things. He has to know that the public mood is now talking about the BBI to look at this Constitution. He has to know that we are 18 months away to a general election and having an election now is going to bring the governors and himself to go for an election and he has to know whether he has money to pay for it. He has to think this before he does his “shall”. It is not that these things are not there. He has to think through them. By the time he has thought all these things, you will discover that the word “shall” is indeterminate. The word “shall” may not necessarily be immediate and even when it is immediate it may not be now. That is why up to today we do not have judges appointed. We are in the same country and we have been thrown where we are. I would have wished that the Chief Justice had not done this. I want to remember him more by the successes of the election petition that he handled, in my view but now there is another way in which I have to think in evaluating my understanding of him. But whichever way, let us not worry: let us not be a Parliament which looks like we are fighting an institution. It is clear in my mind and it is clear in the Constitution that we…. A very imminent lawyer was saying that the things we are passing here are null and void. He has not read the Constitution. If you had read the Constitution, you would know that the proceedings of this House are not invalidated in any way. Even if there was something which was untoward or unconstitutional, still, the proceedings of this House are force of law and are not invalidated. So, what we are doing here is what Articles 94 and 95 of the Constitution expect of us to do."
}