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{
    "id": 1028406,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1028406/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 71,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kipipiri, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Amos Kimunya",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 174,
        "legal_name": "Amos Muhinga Kimunya",
        "slug": "amos-kimunya"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Speaker. I am sure that Hon. Junet wants to ventilate on the same. It is really a sad situation that the court, in its infinite wisdom, has ruled that all the work done in this House since 2013 up to now is of dubious constitutional validity. They have listed the 23 Bills that were sent to them. They have extended to say that whatever is in process should be stopped because it risks suffering the same invalidity on the basis that the two Speakers have not been seen together declaring a concurrence or signing a paper. I have attended a few of these functions and during assent of the Bill by the President, I have seen the two Speakers. If they are happy at the point of signing, does it not validate that they might have agreed at the beginning? This is happening because people are working on pedantic reasoning that since we cannot see evidence that you concurred, then the Bill is illegal or unconstitutional ab initio . The risk is that the 23 Bills have been declared null and void and we have a nine-month window to ratify, but I know that once something is unconstitutional, it is dead. There is no reawakening. That is the confusion we are having as mere mortals. The Appropriation Bill of 2019 has been declared null and void but money was appropriated to the Judiciary and the entire country and it lapsed. You will recall that in the advisory by the Chief Justice to the President to disband this House, he reemphasized that there is no gain without pain, and that some pain is necessary for people to insist on the rule of law. It seems to be same argument that the judges have put on this because they were made aware of the grave consequences in nullifying laws that are already in place. People are already refusing to pay taxes. It is not just the 23 Bills because between 2019 and last week, since all the laws passed followed the same process, they must be wrong. At the onset of the bicameral Parliament in 2013 to 2018, the process was the same and this means that we have allowed the likes of Omtatah to nullify all those laws in court. Hon. Speaker, I would like to ask that we should advise the Controller of Budget and the National Treasury to freeze the IFMIS system because if the Appropriation Act of 2019 is illegal, the Appropriation Bill of 2020 that has been done in the same way risks being invalid. We should ask them to freeze all payments so that people can wake up to the reality of the kind of judgments they are giving in this country. I thought the law is supposed to serve the greater public good but it is now serving some myopic pedantic interests from an activism perspective. The judges should demonstrate that they can absorb the pain by us freezing the illegal payment to the Judiciary. It would be unfortunate for a Judiciary that says that we should adhere to the rule of law to benefit from an illegal Act. They should be the first to state that they do not want to receive any money because it is illegal. We can then move to the Senate that took us to court but I do not think it is right to punish wananchi for things that have come from unconstitutional implementation. They can come at the second or third tier. We want to ask the National Treasury that as from today, they should freeze the IFMIS system for the Judiciary and within the PSC, for the Senate. They will start reasoning once they feel the pain. It is unfortunate that we cannot carry out our business and our constitutional mandate is being interfered with, and because we want to obey, we will stop. But we want to ask the National Treasury to obey and freeze the IFMIS system for those two institutions."
}