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{
    "id": 1202085,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1202085/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 339,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Murkomen",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 440,
        "legal_name": "Onesimus Kipchumba Murkomen",
        "slug": "kipchumba-murkomen"
    },
    "content": "Even when the President said that there must be a mechanism for Cabinet Secretaries (CSs) to come to this House and the “Lower House” to make presentations and be questioned about what they are doing, that mechanism already exists in the Standing Orders. Like Sen. M. Kajwang’ submitted yesterday, that can easily be done as soon as we lower this Mace and have a Committee of the Whole. It is possible for a CS to come to this Chamber and make a presentation and be questioned on any issue. In any case, we have done that before. When we were dealing with the issue of Medical Equipment Services (MES) in this House, we summoned the CS. We were almost a full House even though we did it through Committee of the Whole that I chaired at that point in time. Therefore, it can become a practice to enhance accountability. It may not be necessary to do it every week, but that is something that can be done once in three months. Many Senators here know that for the past 10 years, most CSs were non- responsive to the invitations by this House. We have had fights. Sometimes we had to go to the extent of issuing summons to them. In fact, some of them were fined because they were not responsive to the requests by this House to come and account to the people of Kenya through their elected representative. I wonder when I see my colleagues in the minority side criticizing that very important point. I think it is because they are used to the National Assembly, where they had this luxury of Cabinet Secretaries, who come running because they knew the mandate of National Assembly included budgeting of their department and ministries. This House has, however, been ignored for long. It is important to have a President in office who appreciates the role of the Senate and Parliament and wants to give support to the Legislature to function. Number two, the President talked about support for the Judiciary. It is instructive to note that this President has a majority in both the National Assembly and the Senate. Therefore, when he is having budgetary proposal from his Cabinet Secretary, it includes budgetary allocations that are related to the Judiciary. We cannot close our eyes. We all know of the separation of powers. However, there are limits to the separation of powers. Separation of powers does not mean enmity between the Executive, Judiciary and Legislature. We all play our roles. If that was the case, then the Judiciary would not even send the Registrar to come and defend the judicial budget in Parliament. The argument would then be that the President should not have a say on what Judiciary can get. That argument can be extrapolated to mean that the National Assembly should not also have a say in the budget of the Judiciary, yet it is a constitutional responsibility that budgetary proposal should come from the Executive and the National Assembly would play a role in ensuring the allocation of the budget is successful. It is not enough that we have a budget. We all know that there are administrative bottlenecks that can easily hinder various agencies of government from receiving their allocation. We know this for sure because many of the counties have not received their"
}