Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1123873,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1123873/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 290,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Were",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13183,
        "legal_name": "Petronila Were Lokorio",
        "slug": "petronila-were-lokorio"
    },
    "content": "(5) The speaker of the county. (6) The leader of the majority party. (7) The leader of the minority party. (8) The chairperson of the County Assembly Committee, who is responsible for budget, finance and planning. (9) The county attorney, an ex-officio member. This is a group of political leaders of the county. The County Attorney will make sure that the changes that are suggested by the members of the CLF are in tune with the Constitution of Kenya and other laws. International laws are applicable. They will not work in a vacuum away from the rest of the world or the country. The presence of the county attorney is important, and I commend the Mover of this Bill for putting the county attorney into the CLF. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the presence of the county commissioner is also important because it will act as the liaison between the national and county government. We are one country, one government. The right needs to know what the left is doing, so that we have less friction. I know that we already have the Intergovernmental Budget and Economic Council (IBEC), but it has not been able to achieve much of the liaison of good cooperation between the county and national governments. We still have the national government trying to pull functions back to the center. We saw what happened with the Nairobi City County Government, where certain functions were brought to the national Government because the county government could not manage them. For instance, the health function, which is a devolved function and very important to our people. It was actually the backbone upon which the 2010 Constitution was overwhelmingly voted for by Kenyans. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the county secretary will be in charge of making sure that the annual performance report of the county is presented to the Senate. The membership of the CLF is well constituted. It has taken into consideration all the political leaders of the country, so, everyone is on board. We have seen instances where Members of the National Assembly, through the National Government Constituencies Development fund (NG-CDF) come up with a project that the county government already had in their plans. That creates a form of friction where we have many incomplete projects or others which are started and are not the priority of the people. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, in the amendment to Section 91(c), we have been told that the forum will only be properly constituted when the governor, Senator and speaker of the county assembly are present, in addition to at least a third of the rest of the members of the National Assembly. This is crucial so that people do not hold meetings at the whim of the governor, who is the chair. The most important people must be at that meeting for the deliberations to be considered crucial or binding. I know that Sen. M. Kajwang’, the Mover of this Bill, is busy. In his reply, I would like him to let us know this. I did not quite get this is his moving notes. Why is it that the deputy speaker, when acting as the speaker, cannot assume the office of the chairperson of the CPSB? What are we losing out? What is the problem with the deputy speaker chairing the board in the absence of the speaker? What is the county suffering? Could he make that clarification when he replies to this Bill?"
}