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{
    "id": 1227233,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1227233/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 385,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Osotsi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13588,
        "legal_name": "Osotsi Godfrey Otieno",
        "slug": "osotsi-godfrey-otieno"
    },
    "content": "Senate cannot descend that low. We want to pass laws that are going to be respected in a long time to come. As I said, in future, these laws will come to haunt you. I have gone through that in the other House where I was. I remember they vigorously passed the Security Laws. The same people who passed it, came later on to cry about it. I am very certain that it will again happen to this House. Let us be objective. In future, we are going to remind ourselves of what we did by forcefully passing these amendments. I have read the Constitution. Nowhere does it say that CSs shall appear before the Plenary. The only place where you get appearance of the CSs is in Article 153(3). It says – “A Cabinet Secretary shall attend before a committee of the National Assembly, or the Senate, when required by the committee, and answer any question concerning a matter for which the Cabinet Secretary is responsible.” Madam Temporary Speaker, even if we wanted CSs to appear, then, we would have gone the Sen. Okiya Omtatah way. Let us have a Committee of the Whole, so that a CS appears before a Committee of the Whole House. Then, we can ask questions in that Committee of the Whole. That will not be breaking the Constitution. Nonetheless, by amending the Standing Orders in the manner in which we have done, it offends Article 153 of the Constitution. Additionally, as some Members have said, we need to ask ourselves, what system of Government we are looking for. Are we looking for a parliamentary system of Government? If so, then let us not do things in piecemeal. Let us even have a Prime Minister, who will even be appearing here for Prime Minister’s hour, to answer questions from us. I know we have a position that is close to a Prime Minister. Why do we want to pass these amendments before we put that positon in law? I am talking about the Prime Cabinet Secretary, who happens to be my constituent. It is very clear in the coalition agreement, that his position was supposed to be entrenched in law, 30 days on assumption of power. That has not been done. Therefore, let us have either a parliamentary or presidential system of Government. Let us not have something strange that is in between, which is not clear. Madam Temporary Speaker, this agitation of wanting to change things to look different is going to hurt this country. We have had cases where laws and operations in Government have been changed. The other day, we heard that you do not have to go through the Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs on a diplomatic issue. You can go directly to a line Ministry. That violates the Vienna Convention. We want to do things differently in this country and it is going to hurt us. To end, as Sen. M. Kajwang’ has said, Wednesdays are days when some of our Committees, especially County Public Accounts Committee (CPAC) and County Public Investment Committee, engage counties. We have a backlog of work."
}