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{
    "id": 1219793,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1219793/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 144,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ugunja, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Opiyo Wandayi",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "During the Committee on Selection sitting held on Wednesday 22nd February 2023, the Minority Party leadership proposed changes on Minority Party membership to a number of House Committees. To the consternation of the Minority Party, the said proposed changes met strong opposition from Members of the Majority Party in the Committee on Selection, eventually denying them the requisite approval thereby occasioning the current impasse. It is against this backdrop that the Minority Party seeks your intervention on this critical matter. We are seeking your guidance on the same and specifically invite you to make determination on the following issues: 1. Whether choices and decisions of a parliamentary party or a coalition of parties on its representation of the House committees are an exclusive mandate and preserve of the respective party or coalition of parties or a function to be shared by other parties or coalitions in the House. 2. Whether Members of the Majority Party in the Committee on Selection can veto, challenge or oppose changes to House Committee membership proposed the Minority Party. 3. Whether it is intended, under Standing Orders 172 and 173, that parliamentary parties would be granted powers to veto or challenge each other’s decisions especially on appointment or change in appointment of House committee membership. It can clearly be gleaned from Standing Order No.173 (1) that nomination of a Member to serve in a select committee simply requires consultation of the Committee on Selection with relevant parliamentary parties. The Standing Order stipulates as follows: “Unless otherwise provided by any written law or these Standing Orders, the Committee on Selection shall, in consultation with parliamentary parties, nominate Members who shall serve on a Select Committee”. Hon. Speaker, in our understanding, the consultation provided for here refers to the courtesy of formally informing all Members of the Committee on Selection of a party’s or coalition’s choices of Members to serve in a House Committee in order that the proposals eventually submitted to the House for approval are regarded as the property of the Committee on Selection in the spirit of bipartisanship in the conduct of parliamentary business. It would have otherwise been too disorderly for each nominating party or coalition to present to the whole House for approval its own nominees to various House Committees. Given that the resultant Committees are Committees of this House and not of the respective parties or coalitions, it is only logical that parties or coalitions extend courtesy to each other in the Committee on Selection even as they exercise their respective exclusive mandates."
}