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{
    "id": 1211535,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1211535/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 245,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nyando, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Jared Okelo",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker. Allow me, from the outset, to welcome back my colleagues, the Office of the Speaker and the secretariat in general having been at home during our recess for the last two months. On the same breadth, allow me to express our collective frustration and resentment, as a House, on this matter of NG-CDF. Before we went home for our recess, the Cabinet Secretary for Treasury made an undertaking that from the 9th day of December 2022, Ksh2 billion will be expended to our accounts every week. By now, every individual constituency account should be having Ksh80 million. The Cabinet Secretary has walked back on all the promises he made. Up and until the time we showed up in Mombasa during our induction and staged a small go-slow, we had not received anything. This House is a co-equal branch of Government with the Executive together with the Judiciary. This House has gone into lengths to midwife and legislate pieces of legislation from the Executive without any inordinate delay. However, we are where the Executive makes promises to us that it never respects. Today, the Executive will come out to ask us to pass the Supplementary Estimates I of 2022/2023 Financial Year. I want to ask this House to refuse to pass this Supplementary Budget until the entire NG-CDF monies are wired into our accounts. Why do I say this? Most of our children who solely depend on the bursaries are still held up in homes without any recourse and we are here passing every piece of legislation and agenda from the Executive. I want this House to stand strong and refuse to pass the Supplementary Budget until all the monies are submitted. Back to the course, there are four issues that have been raised by William Samoei Ruto with regard to his Memorandum to the Speaker of the National Assembly on oversight, office of the official opposition, the NG-CDF and gender representation. If you read Article 255 of our Constitution, apart from the NG-CDF, all these proposals must go through a referendum. As you alluded to during your contribution, there is nothing illegal and unconstitutional about the NG-CDF Act of 2015. However, we still want to anchor it in law so that it can be solidified in a way that no court in this Republic will once again tinker with it as we have seen in the recent past. So, I am afraid that if we carry out an omnibus legislation and include the NG-CDF in the proposals as advanced by the President, then the NG-CDF Act may face the wrath together with all these three proposals as presented by the President. Therefore, I want to ask that we decipher issues. If it is about the NG-CDF, let it be a stand-alone advancement of a proposed legislation. Let us not lump it up with the rest of the proposals that are likely to face a problem with the Judiciary branch of our Government. I want to ask that even as the Departmental Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs (JLAC) retreats to look at these proposals, let the NG-CDF be a stand-alone. Let it not be together with the rest. It should not be lost on us that the reason why the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) died at the Supreme Court is because the former President, Uhuru Kenyatta, gazetted a team that went around the country collecting views on changing certain constitutional issues. Therefore, the mere fact that the President gazetted that team, the entire BBI died in the hands of the seven judges of the Supreme Court. Now, President Uhuru only gazetted; he did not do anything else. We have been invited by William Ruto by way of a letter to the Speaker of the National Assembly to consider changing the Constitution. He has not only written a letter but The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}