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{
    "id": 110744,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/110744/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 434,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Prof. Anyang’-Nyong’o",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Medical Services",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 193,
        "legal_name": "Peter Anyang' Nyong'o",
        "slug": "peter-nyongo"
    },
    "content": "We will be much better off when we are implementing community rights as said here. After the constitution comes into force and we are not devolving funds systematically to the devolved units; and we do not have a proper system to ensure that community rights are implemented, a Kenyan will stand up and claim this particular aspect of our constitution. So, this constitution is so carefully constructed to ensure that the Bill of rights is implemented and respected. I could go on and on and point out certain aspects of rights and fundamental freedoms that directly relate to the architecture of governance and devolution. Simply put, if we were to leave devolution as it is now only as two tier, there will be such a big distance between the national government and the counties that managing the counties from the centre will systematically drive us back to using the Provincial Administration, as we know it, to man the counties. At the moment, you know that the province is constructed in such way that it is meant to do the works of co-ordination and supervision but without being accountable to any elected body. The PC, the Provincial Medical Officer, all those provincial officials have no elected body to be accountable to. The DC at least says he has a county council with elected councilors, however, weak the county council is. But at the very critical level of the province, they are still functioning as they did during colonial times when they were representative of the governors among the natives. The PC only knew that he got orders from the governor and implemented the orders. He did not care about the natives on whom he was implementing orders because they were meant to salute and obey. We have now come to a constitution which wants to promote, protect and guard community and individual rights. Let us make sure that we have provincial officials who are accountable to an elected body for purposes of co-ordinating and ensuring the execution of government functions at the county level. This will also be for purposes of co-ordinating services and infrastructure affecting counties within a certain region in a logical manner. It does not make sense for a major road in a county only to be managed by a county. It makes much more sense to me if the road from Kericho to Usenge was being managed by the provincial authority rather than being managed by various counties along the way who, for purposes of raising revenue, could easily put toll stations to get their revenues. This is what happened in modern England. The reason why the King decided to shut down all kinds of principalities in England was to make England have a better system of communication. I think we have had a good experience with provincial assemblies after independence when we had presidents at the provincial level. For example, in Nyanza, Mr. Okiki Amayo was the president of the Nyanza Regional Assembly. At that point in time, the provinces had enough resources soon after independence to run certain services and provide investment for certain infrastructure. What Tom Mboya and his team did, and I was in High School then, was to do a very simple thing; just deny the regions the resources and then they collapse. It is not because the regions were not viable. The central government decided to deny them the resources because the Constitution allowed them to do so. This Draft Constitution is making sure that through the National Revenue Commission that we put in the Constitution, budgetary provisions flow from the national government to the devolved governments. This will ensure that what happened at Independence does not recur."
}