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{
    "id": 1066264,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1066264/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 230,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Prof.) Ongeri",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 124,
        "legal_name": "Samson Kegeo Ongeri",
        "slug": "samson-ongeri"
    },
    "content": "I remember his vice-president then joined the DP and subsequently became the President of this Nation. Again, if you remember the run up to 2007 we had what we called skirmishes, tribal clashes and many other nasty situations. That elicited Kenyans to look for a way of understanding one another. We had the Serena negotiation team headed by the late, His Excellency Kofi Annan and we were able to manage that item extremely well. I was a member of that committee as well and quite a number of Senators who are here in this House. That brought in a constitutional moment because the recommendations coming out of that committee ushered in the 2010 constitutional moment that we agreed upon. In order to put this thing into perspective, when we promulgated the 2010 Constitution, it was agreed that 80 percent of that Constitution’s articles were alright but 20 percent of it needed to be corrected. As you know, our Constitution clearly spells out that there shall be a review of constitutional boundaries in every eight to 10 years. That constitutional moment is now. It is now more than 10 years since we promulgated that Constitution and that 20 percent needed to be re-looked at. Normally, this initiative would have been carried out by the IEBC but unfortunately because of the 2017 acrimony in the final results of the presidential vote, this ushered in a controversy that saw the country split in the middle. Let us not cheat ourselves. Let us accept that the handshake did bring about peace in this Nation. Peace is a priceless commodity. You cannot argue against it, you cannot be able to say that there was no peace. Therefore, when I see Members of this House that this is not an opportune time to amend the Constitution, they seem to be oblivious of the fact that this tranquility that they are enjoying now is as a result of that handshake. The handshake has its moment of truth, the handshake has its moments of light in this Nation that brought the protagonist and antagonist together to be able to pull out the BBI agreement in this matter. Let me say for purposes of record of this House, if all of you remember, the BBI was launched in Kisii County. We were the first county to be able to launch the BBI. At that time we did enumerate the items that needed to be covered in the BBI. Finally, when the BBI report was ready Kisii County was again the one where they launched the final BBI product. What baffles me today is that we took part in the launching of the BBI, we took part in the ushering in of the BBI report but we ended up with zero constituencies. That in itself is not fair. I think it is a matter that needs to be looked at because when I look at the BBI report, it has very many good points but what I really needed to bring out was, yes, it was by popular initiative because it was anchored on Article 257 of the Constitution; this was not a parliamentary process. Let us not on whether it is a popular initiative or for two people or not. The issue is that it was a popular initiative because a lot of Kenyans bought in the peace dividends that they were enjoying at that time. What we now need to do is to look at these articles that have been elaborated in this Constitution whether they are suitable or not. We do not have to fight about it. We 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."
}