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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Suba South, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. John Mbadi",
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"legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
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"content": "The Bill seeks to amend Chapter Two of the Constitution on formative aspects of the Republic to address regional integration, cohesion, shared prosperity and the centrality of the economy. This is in order to harness regional trade, investment and people-to-people links to increase our prosperity, opportunities for investment and enhance our security. Further, the Bill seeks to amend Chapter Three on citizenship to strengthen the national ethos that I talked about and the responsibilities of citizens. If you look at the current Constitution, it talks about the rights of individuals. It does not address the responsibilities. Rights come with responsibilities. You must also be responsible as a Kenyan. The amendments are informed by the undertaking that the current Constitution has rightly imposed various socio-economic duties on the State but does not envision any responsibility on the part of the citizens. The Bill also seeks to amend the Chapter Four on the bill of rights to provide a constitutional underpinning for the privacy of citizens’ personal data as an emerging area in human rights owing to significant technological developments in this area. Recently, we have had the Huduma Namba. All the information that we provide to the State needs to be protected. Chapter Six on leadership and integrity is also being amended to intensify the fight against corruption, as I mentioned earlier, by strengthening the relevant institutions. This includes a mechanism for more expeditious conduct of investigations, prosecution and trial of corruption and corruption-related matters. Further, the Bill seeks to amend Chapter Seven on representation of the people to remove issues of divisive elections arising from electoral processes. One way is to enhance transparency and fairness of representation in the electoral system. Second, is to promote electoral competition based on ideas, values and our shared humanity rather than the common enemy - identity politics - that have defined our electoral cycle to date. Third, is to promote gender equity in governance by actualising the constitutional provision of the two-thirds gender principle which has become illusionary all these years. We have attempted many times in this House to actualise the provisions of our Constitution regarding the gender principle. The Bill seeks to implement the provisions of Articles 1(d) and 89(7) of the Constitution which mandates the electoral system to comply with the universal principles of fair representation, equality of the vote and the requirement that, IEBC, in setting constituency and ward boundaries, should progressively work towards ensuring that the number of inhabitants in each constituency and ward is, nearly as possible, equal to the population quota. I have heard people fault the 70 constituencies but by 2022, chances are that those constituencies which were protected, including Budalangi and Othaya, are supposed to disappear. How then do you all of a sudden tell people who have been enjoying representation that henceforth, those constituencies do not exist? At the same time, there are constituencies which feel that they are underrepresented in terms of their numerical population and demographics. You must balance all this. It comes with a price. The Bill seeks to amend Chapter Eight on the Legislature to remodel the parliamentary system by bringing the Government back to the House. We have talked about this. 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."
}