Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1049341,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1049341/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 50,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Seme, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) James Nyikal",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 434,
        "legal_name": "James Nyikal",
        "slug": "james-nyikal"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this extremely important Bill. I rise to support this Bill. As I do so, let me first of all thank the two committees; namely, the Departmental Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs and the Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee, for their efforts in the harmonization of the Bills that has brought a lot of sense to the whole debate. The main object of this Bill is to establish a fair and transparent process for procedures of referendum, in particular, the referendum to amend the Constitution. Therefore, it operationalises and enhances Article 255, which talks about the circumstances under which you need a referendum; Article 256, which is on the parliamentary initiative; and very importantly, Article 257, which is on the popular initiative of amending the Constitution. I support this Bill because it provides very clear procedures. It gives timelines. It provides for committees, proponents and opponents because that gives a much cleaner way of debating any referendum that you will have. If people are organized in tangible and recognizable groups that are actually registered and are legal by law, it is much easier. It also provides for the funding. Importantly, it also provides for clear procedures of petitioning the outcome of a referendum. This is extremely important because referenda are likely to be contested. Luckily so far, we have not had this. We have been lucky that we have had that referendum without petitions coming forward that would have overturned everything. However, there are a few areas that many Members have talked about that we will need to look into. For example, there is the issue of verification of the signatures of the one million people that are required for the popular initiative. The only thing that IEBC can do is to verify that the names they have are registered voters using ID numbers and the Voters Register. I do not see how they can actually verify the signatures. It may be possible technically in the future, if we have a single registry which has signatures that can be available in soft copy to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). As things stand now, that is something that we will look into. The joint effort of the two committees has cleared that. I support that. I agree with them on that. 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."
}