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{
    "id": 1406247,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1406247/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 173,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Suba North, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Millie Odhiambo-Mabona",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "and Legal Affairs for bringing this Bill and also for the Members who were involved in the National Dialogue Committee that has made certain recommendations. Hon. Deputy Speaker, I support but as I do so, I want to indicate that sometimes there is an advantage and disadvantage of serving in the House for a long time. Every electoral cycle we come back with amendments to the Elections Act. The reason we do that is because we never get it right. In every election cycle there is a problem. We need to interrogate the deeper issues that bedevil our electoral process. I said it yesterday and I repeat that I have written a book called Rig or be Rigged. In the book, as the title suggests, in the Kenyan elections, you either rig or you are rigged. We do not give any other option. Since we have that sort of mentality, we must always come back to try and get a fair system. Unless we get a third option which is elections that are done fairly above board, I will have to be chasing your bag, the way I was doing in Bomas of Kenya, to see whether you have hidden things in the bag or whether you are stealing our elections. It is actually very backward that we do not have that much faith. The system is structured in a way that we should not have faith. One of the things I said in my book is that our system of elections is nascent and many do that deliberately, both at the party level and at the national level because we do not want fair elections. We just want to ensure that the smartest, most crooked and moneyed person wins the elections. Therefore, the people who may win the elections fairly have to go a thousand extra miles to get there. Even though I support all these amendments that have been brought up, unless we change the reasons leading to these situations, which is our software, as individuals in this country, every election cycle, there will always be an amendment to the Elections Act. Right now, we are including the expansion of the panel which is a good thing for it to be more inclusive and also have the voice of the political players but that is not enough. I will go back to the thing that we need to change our own mindset as individuals and think about the legacy that we want to leave in this country for our children. Do we want our children, either pre- election to be fighting and be displaced depending on the alignments that are in this country every election cycle? So that if the alignments do not work ethnically, then there will be ethnic cleansing, killings and displacements or post-election violence where you see the number of people who are killed and shot by the police due to protest. Is that what we want as a country? We may be able to go through that process, but I do not think if that is something we would want to bequeath to our children and our grandchildren. Hon. Deputy Speaker, as I have said I support, but we really need to do a rethinking as a country?"
}