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"id": 1066547,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1066547/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Wako",
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"speaker": {
"id": 366,
"legal_name": "Amos Sitswila Wako",
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"content": "On the issue of corruption, we have stated under Clause Six that there should be an effective and expeditious investigation, prosecution and trial of cases relating to this Chapter. This is the chapter that deals with national values. We have seen many cases come, and two years down the line, we forget about them. Elections come and the people involved in those corruption deals stand and use that money to destabilize you in your Constituency and so on. Now, as a constitutional principle, investigations and prosecution relating to corruption and offences under that Chapter, should be expedited. Therefore, it will be incumbent upon the various constitutional bodies dealing with investigations and prosecution and even the Judiciary, dealing with actual cases, to expedite at every stage of the investigations, prosecution, hearing and disposal of those cases. In order to assist to achieve the two-thirds gender rule and so on, we have very many provisions. I will not go into them now because of the five minutes. However, let me draw the attention of the Members to Clause 7. It deals with sanctions for a political party that fails to comply with the principle that not more than two-thirds of party candidates should be of the same gender. This is because many of the failures have been about some political parties submitting names of just one gender. Madam Deputy Speaker, if enacted, it will now be incumbent upon them under this Constitution, that they submit a list of names that complies with the gender rule. I think it is a step forward. Let me not go into the details of elections. I will not talk about the structure of the Prime Minister because everybody has talked about that. I will talk briefly on the issue of the Ombudsman. When this Constitution was made public for the first time, it simply stated that there will be a judicial ombudsman appointed and reporting to the President and Parliament. Obviously, introducing a person appointed by the President, sitting in the Judicial Service Committee (JSC) and reporting to the President and Parliament was going to undermine the judicial independence. I am glad that a number of people made submissions thereafter and the original formulation was changed. Now, the judicial ombudsman reports to the JSC and not the President. Even though a report goes to Parliament, the President is the appointing authority. Madam Deputy Speaker, my preference is that the Chief Justice nominates the ombudsman, with extra cautions that have now been placed since the first draft came out. That way, all he does is just investigate and give it to the JSC. It is not very different from what is there now because as we speak, JSC has an ombudsman. Somehow, maybe he is not very much known and maybe because of the low level status, he does not carry the weight that it is. This Constitution gives the ombudsman some status and let everybody know that at least there is somebody they can go to lodge a complaint to which will be investigated. Once investigated, it will go to JSC. Part of the complaint we received was that JSC, because they have representatives from the bench; Court of Appeal, magistrates court and the High Court, they tend to protect their own, people who voted for them. Therefore, there may be many complaints lying there, which they have not dealt with because of that. 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."
}