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{
    "id": 124499,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/124499/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 342,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Prof. Ongeri",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Education",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 124,
        "legal_name": "Samson Kegeo Ongeri",
        "slug": "samson-ongeri"
    },
    "content": " Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, yes, I am aware of Section 15 and I am also aware of the recent amendment which creates the Office of the Prime Minister and the two Deputies, whom we have ignored. Therefore, there was no need for a point of order. Let me be allowed to make my comments. I think it is important for him to recognize the fact that we cannot pass this Bill the way it is now without bringing on board the recent amendments. You have not even made an attempt on how all this will be distributed in terms of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Ministers and the rest. The next point that I want to dwell on, and hon. Ethuro is my good friend, is that he should look at the Constitution. There is already an assumption, and it is wrong to make an assumption on the impending possible legislative mechanism that will come before this House. I have no intention of anticipating debate. Supposing the Committee of Experts and the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional Review comes to this House and says that we will have a particular type of Government, whether it is Parliamentary or Presidential or a hybrid of the same and establishes various offices, where will these amendments stand in the context of the impending Constitutional review, which is currently on? One of the things that was to happen after the National Accord and Reconciliation Act was entrenched in the Constitution was that we were to speedily, in the next 12 months, have a new constitutional dispensation in place. We are trying to take a short-cut and have this Bill in-between and scuttle what is expected to come to the Floor of this House. I think, even with the best intentions of the Mover of this Motion, it will not serve a useful purpose at this stage. It is too early for this Bill to be on the Floor of this House. I want to convince my colleagues that this Bill will stand enriched after we will have passed the Constitutional review process, and after we know what kind of system of Government we will have in place. After that, this Bill will have its place on the Floor of this House, and we will have enriched the debate. It may be possible that what hon. Ethuro is proposing at this stage can be accommodated with regard to the limitation of the number of Ministers. There are several reasons why you should limit the number of Ministers. However, at this stage, to try and just plug in a figure under a certain mathematical formula that he used--- We have increased the administrative regions in this country. There is a likelihood of increasing the number of constituencies in this country. Therefore, there is need for fixing the figure of the numbers of Ministries based on a particular mathematical formula, or at least give a reasonable explainable process that everybody can understand. The figure of 24 sounds perfect; it is divisible by two throughout and sounds reasonable. However, unless we just want to follow practices where people say that there shall be 12 Ministries or 13 Ministries--- I want to beseech the Mover that this Bill has come early, and it is anticipating many things and ignoring the obvious."
}