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{
    "id": 1202742,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1202742/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 163,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "Of course, in his beginning, he noted that for the first time, this is a Parliament that has had as many as 193 Members of the National Assembly and 17 Senators re- elected to this House. That has not happened under the new Constitution before. We have such a high attrition rate as Members of Parliament (MPs) that it was getting to a place where being an MP in Kenya was about to be added to the list of a thousand ways to die. When you are an MP, after every five years, you have to face the electorate and chances of survival are only 20 or 30 per cent. Therefore, this is not the kind of job that many people would pick. However, with this count, 17 out of 47 works up to slightly close to 30 per cent. It is an improvement. If you are a keen follower of many legislatures, especially those that are bi-cameral in nature, like the one we have in our country, the ‘Upper House,’ that is the Senate, is actually a House that retains the best that it has to offer in terms of leadership. On many occasions, it is the holding place before people proceed to either Presidency or higher levels other than legislation. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the fact that most of our colleagues were voted back, is good testimony that the country is beginning to appreciate us. There was a huge debate in the country, especially to those that faced reelection in the 2017 General Election on what the work of a Senator is. On many occasions, you had to defend yourself since this whole Senate business was new to the Kenyan voter. Many of us would attend functions during the first Senate of this Constitution and have cases where the governor would rise to speak and mention the development he had brought to a particular area. Then the Member of the National Assembly would rise and say, “Good people of this village, this classroom was built by myself. Let us now welcome our Senator, to say something.” You would then be speaking about oversight, which was completely strange. What is this animal called oversight? On many occasions, the ordinary voters would consider Senators to be joyriders or idlers, who disappear into Nairobi and come back after five years for another chance. That seems to be waning off in the mind of Kenyan voters. They are beginning to appreciate the place of the Senate and that can be seen in the number of Senators that were re-elected. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I believe that the people will begin to enjoy more the fruits of devolution, if we as a House pull together, execute our constitutional mandate and hold governors and Executive to account. We shall ensure we devolve as much as possible of the national resources to our counties and partner with our county assemblies. It will then be possible to have more than 50 per cent of us reelected to this House. Therefore, it will be just a good celebration. As it had been mentioned earlier, the President is a champion of gender inclusion in leadership. This has been noted in his Speech. In the 12th Parliament, we had only 23 women elected into single constituencies. The National Assembly has now 29 women elected into single constituency. That is a good improvement. It is unfortunate that as a Senate, we did not have growth in terms of women Senators that were elected. We had three last time and three this time as well. I wish that"
}