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{
    "id": 1065258,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1065258/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 219,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Omogeni",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13219,
        "legal_name": "Erick Okong'o Mogeni",
        "slug": "erick-okongo-mogeni"
    },
    "content": "“The essential pre-condition for a referendum that is initiated by the people themselves is that it must go against the wishes of either the Government or Parliament.” Those are the characteristics of a popular initiative. As we process this Bill, therefore, let us bear in mind that this is a Bill that is being promoted by the citizens themselves. The people who appeared before us made very strong observations, that in such a Bill, the Government should not expend money in promoting it and that that should purely be a task undertaken by the people of Kenya. Going back to the observations of the Committee, we made a number of them that point to this Bill as being progressive, especially to counties. Some of the clauses that we picked include the amendments to Article 203 where resources being sent to counties will increase from 15 per cent to 35 per cent. We also picked out the proposed amendments to Article 202 of the Constitution, where when we deal with sharable revenue, we will no longer look at the accounts as audited by the National Assembly, but as audited by the Auditor-General and delivered to the National Assembly. We did assimilation and realized that if we use this new formula next year, counties will benefit from an increase in allocation from the current Kshs370 billion to Kshs570 billion. Madam Deputy Speaker, there are a number of clauses we found to be very problematic. We have made recommendations that there should be some legislative intervention by Parliament. In Clause 13, for example, the format of nominating candidates to fill up special seats to meet the two-thirds gender rule, has been changed from the number of seats won by a particular political party to the number of votes garnered by a political party. Madam Deputy Speaker, the most problematic Clause is the proposed amendment to Article 97(4) of the Constitution. It says: “The candidates for special seats will comprise candidates who stood for elections under Clause 1(a) with precedence being given to those who receive the greatest number of votes.” We debated this Article and even tried to involve the experts to give us some light. However, we were unable to get clear answers. The question is: What happens to people from counties with low populations and low number of registered voters? I know some counties are well endowed with the number of registered voters, but there are others with few registered voters. A good example is Lamu East Constituency that has 18,000 registered voters compared to a constituency in Nairobi City County that has over 234,000 registered voters. Madam Deputy Speaker, this particular clause that is trying to address issues of gender is problematic. We have proposed in our Report that it should be relooked with a legislation being passed to ensure this Article is given some clarity. On the re-composition of the Executive, the Committee had no problem with the new arrangement where we will have seats of Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Ministers. The only observation we made under Article 151(a) is that there seems to be a systematic campaign to render this House irrelevant. Madam Deputy Speaker, if you see the proposed Article 151, the Prime Minister will only oversee the legislative agenda of the Government in the National Assembly. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}