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{
    "id": 1066501,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1066501/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 219,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Prof.) Kamar",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 33,
        "legal_name": "Margaret Jepkoech Kamar",
        "slug": "margaret-kamar"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, I do not want to anticipate your ruling on the issue of Article 257, but it is also possible for this House, when it comes to amendments, to use Article 256 to correct Article 257 at any other time. The beauty of amendments according to this Constitution is that they can be introduced at any time. They can be introduced by anybody and should not be limited. Even as we discuss these amendments, my feeling is that we should not try to overload it. We should deal with it as it is because we have opportunities to amend and change whatever we wish to change even later. I stand here the way I stood in the year 2010, in the 10th Parliament, knowing that the Constitution of Kenya 2010 was not perfect but supported. I will always be very grateful to one of our Members here, Sen. Murkomen, who assisted me in popularizing the Constitution because I believed in it despite the few errors that we thought should have been corrected. There are a few issues including the position of the Senate; why the Senate has been left the way it was and yet we had very good submissions. Those would be issues that some of us would say needed to be corrected. However, I do not think this is the end of amendments. We can still go back and use Article 256 and amend whatever we want to amend. I really would like to challenge this House that if it is not this 12th Parliament, it should be the next Parliament that should put the Senate in the right position because it is very important that as we do more devolution, we actually do more of oversight. Mr. Speaker, Sir, why do I support this amendment? I support it for a few reasons; the gains that we have got from it. However, remember the fact that anything that has not been done properly should be corrected in later amendments. I think we should actually tell ourselves that the 2010 Constitution has given us opportunities to change anything that we wish to change, either by popular initiative or by Parliament, and we should utilize those clauses. Reason number one for me is the same reason I had in the year 2010, the issue of devolution. Devolution for those of us who were in the Bomas process was a very dear matter. It was very important because the same comments that we are hearing across the House today of marginalization were raised. Issues of imbalance in development were raised. In fact, I am not surprised that Article 257 was crafted the way it is because for those of us who were in Bomas, we had a delegation of 600 Kenyans who were not very comfortable with Members of Parliament. In fact, they were actually very bitter with the way Members or Parliament were behaving. Most of their contributions, if anything, was to distance the MPs from amending on their behalf. This should be a big lesson for us."
}