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"id": 1023040,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1023040/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Suba South, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. John Mbadi",
"speaker": {
"id": 110,
"legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
"slug": "john-mbadi"
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"content": " Thank you, Hon. Speaker. Some of these Bills, about twelve of them that the Budget and Appropriations Committee has declined to approve for further discussion in this House, are very important to this country. I was asking myself, how I wish these individual Members of the Senate, who proposed these Bills, would approach their Members of Parliament, as Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah has said, in the National Assembly to propose the Bills. It is not that the Senate is not allowed to discuss those Bills. A lot of those Bills, if not all, concern counties and, therefore, would go to the Senate. But the Constitution, as it is, does not allow us to accept those Bills to be introduced in the Senate. Hon. Speaker, Article 3 of the Constitution is about the defence of this Constitution. Every person has an obligation to respect, uphold and defend the Constitution. In fact, under that Article, the only other provision is that any attempt to establish a government that is non-compliant with the Constitution is unlawful. So, you can see where the Constitution rates any attempt not to respect this Constitution. It is treated as trying to set a parallel government. Meaning, they have the same weight. It is a very serious offense, if any of us would allow a money Bill to be introduced in the Senate. In fact, it is supposed to be treasonable because the charges for one who tries to set up parallel government is treason. If you fail to respect this Constitution, it is also treasonable, I would assume, because it is under the same Article as the other one. As the Budget and Appropriations Committee, we did the noble thing of declining these Bills. It is not out of disrespect to any House of Parliament. We do know that the Kenyan public decided to create two Houses of Parliament. Probably, it is the only jurisdiction where the two Houses of Parliament are having equal powers, in terms of what is provided for in the Constitution. But what I fail to understand is why the Office of the Clerk of the Senate, which is staffed with good and capable legal minds, I assume, can allow Bills that are clearly money Bills to be introduced in the Senate. The definition of money Bill has no ambiguity. It says, a Bill specified in Article 218. Of course, in Article 218, it is the County Allocation of Revenue Act (CARA) Bill. It is defined as any Bill that contains provisions dealing with taxes. It means anything that deals with taxes and it is not CARA Bill, the imposition of charges on a public fund or the variation even if you just want to repeal or vary a provision or a charge to a public fund, the appropriation receipt et cetera. It is clearly defined. I fail to understand why the Clerk’s Office in the Senate... And I want to speak to the Clerk’s Office. I do not want to speak to the individual Senators because we have different capacities. That is why we employ and pay competent staff to help Members of Parliament, whether in the Senate or in the National Assembly. Hon. Speaker, I also want to find out and I want to be very careful here. Clearly, there is a lot of work for the Senate to do. They can easily avoid money Bills by dealing with their work early enough, so that we do not see some of the circus that we see in this country. The Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) proposed a formula and brought it to Parliament in April 2019. All that time, we are in August the following year. Over one year four months is when we are seeing a Senate that is trying to beat, I do not know what time, to pass that very important Motion. The CRA had various parameters that we thought the Senate would deal with, so that at this time, we would have a formula. However, even though our Standing Orders do not allow us to discuss the other House, I heard a Member say that the leadership in the Senate has a problem. I do not know whether there 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."
}