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{
    "id": 1425299,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1425299/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 236,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sifuna",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13599,
        "legal_name": "Sifuna Edwin Watenya",
        "slug": "sifuna-edwin-watenya"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir. First, allow me to commend Members of this committee. As you know, the committee is chaired by my former classmate. It is such bold decisions that make me proud of being a Member of this House. That we can look at legislation objectively and say we have issues with this proposed legislation, and that we cannot support it. In fact, some of us have taken a position on previous legislation that has been sponsored to this House or originated from the National Assembly. That if a Bill is unconstitutional, you should not even entertain the thought of subjecting it to a Third Reading, where you then introduce amendments. This is because, our position in the Minority side is that you cannot introduce any amendments to breathe life into an unconstitutional Bill. It should be dealt with forthright from the beginning as an unconstitutional Bill. I see that the Members of this committee are people that I would take their position very seriously. I see Sen. Mumma, Sen. Veronica Maina and Sen. Okiya Omtatah. These are people whose advice on the constitutionality or otherwise of any piece of legislation I take very seriously. There are three or four examples that I wanted to give. I saw that the Chairperson of the Committee himself ran us through some of those unconstitutional provisions as a House. This is what led to the conclusion by the committee that we, as a House, cannot abide by some of these proposals. One of the problems we allow ourselves to get into is to allow such Bills to originate from the National Assembly. How do they beat us to originating such legislation? In the historical relationship between these two Houses, the Senate has always complained of being the one that is sidelined and undermined at every turn. If we going to legislation to repair that relationship, we as the wearer of the shoe, should honestly be the ones originating the legislation that we believe will cure this problem. I know that a Bill originating from this House to cure this relationship would be far much purer because we are motivated in this House by the desire to see these constitutional institutions working and nothing else. I would trust this House to prescribe the medicine to this problem than any other place. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, even as we reject this Bill, I would very much challenge the Members of the JLAC to move with haste, put out our own version of a Bill to guide the relationships between these two Houses. It is unfortunate that the Senate Majority Leader is not in the House with us today. Sen. Cheruiyot has walked this journey of the relationship of these two Houses, including the interpretation of Article 110, the matter that is before the Supreme Court and what needs to be done. He has cautioned us that during debate of this matter, we should not make it as if the entire National Assembly is, in fact, at odds with the Senate."
}