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{
    "id": 1203278,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1203278/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 195,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Suna East, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Junet Mohamed",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "walk out as they wished, why have they decided to go to court? They should have just walked away like somebody who is in a supermarket. When we came here, we swore to uphold and defend the Constitution. That is the Oath of Office we took. The Constitution demands that we respect instruments of a legal nature like this that we have committed ourselves to. If you want to walk out of it, that is your choice. But the fact of the matter is that this country will be governed by the rule of law and the Constitution. How do we have a mature democracy? The presidential system that we are using to govern our country was borrowed from the United States of America (USA). There are times when the President of the USA does not have numbers in Congress, but he does not cease being the president. They have had mid-term elections, where the President loses the Congress. Former President Obama lost it in 2015, but he did not cease being the President of the USA. It does not mean that for you to become President, you must have numbers in Parliament. No! Parliament is a separate arm of Government. You can still remain the President without numbers in the National Assembly. You may have numbers in the Senate. That is how mature democracies operate. You can get numbers in Parliament through elections. You cannot get Members of Parliament though poaching. That is the fact of the matter. I want to categorically state on the Floor of this House that the precedence that we are going to set in this Parliament this time will be for posterity. That is because we will have elections in 2027. A President might be elected with fewer numbers in the National Assembly and he may want to force people to accept that he has the majority party in Parliament because he is the President. No! The presidential election is separate from the parliamentary election. People can be elected in one coalition. Let us not mutilate democracy on the Floor of this House. We must accept that the will of Kenyans who elected the President as President must be respected as the will of the people who gave certain coalitions and parties the majority in this House. I am being told that the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Alliance has no leadership in this House. Their presidential candidate is not in this House. The leader of the Kenya Kwanza Alliance is not in this House. He is sitting in State House. He is the President. He is in State House. He is not in this House with us. There is no requirement that the leader of a coalition must be in this House. The leader of a coalition can sit anywhere in town as long as his troops and Members of Parliament are in the House. If that is the case, then let us have the President sitting here with us, as the Leader of the Kenya Kwanza Coalition. As Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Alliance, we do not want to be given an undue advantage. The parties that joined the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Alliance did so knowing very well that they are in that coalition in their right frame of mind and the people who elected them to this House knew very well that they are in that coalition. It will be betrayal of the people who elected them in the name of Azimio for them to come to Parliament and change course. That is not the democracy we want to advance in this country. Let us have clean politics that follows the law. Let us have politics that respects institutions. For example, the Registrar of Political Parties has this document."
}