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{
    "id": 1425309,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1425309/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 246,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sifuna",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13599,
        "legal_name": "Sifuna Edwin Watenya",
        "slug": "sifuna-edwin-watenya"
    },
    "content": "incurred by that House of Parliament in approaching the court shall be regarded as wasteful expenditure.” It goes on to state under Sub Clause (6) that- “The cost in respect of wasteful expenditure under Sub Section (5) shall be in accordance with a prescribed procedure be recovered without delay from a public or state officer including a holder of a political office who caused the House of Parliament not to comply with the requirements of this section.” Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, you and I have the privilege of sitting in the SBC. You have seen numerous examples of attempts to resolve matters internally, but have failed due to various issues. I can see Sen. Tabitha Mutinda knows exactly what I am talking about. It is possible for us to fail to agree internally. There are people who sabotage attempts to resolve matters between the two Houses amicably. If an officer of the Senate advises the House that at the stage which we are, the only place we can find a resolution is with the courts, then they say that it is Sen. Sifuna; a holder of a political office, elected Senator of Nairobi City County and member of the SBC who refused mediation and insisted we must go to court, then they should recover the money from me. This is meant to intimidate people from availing themselves of the option and exercise of the right to approach the courts for dispute resolution. On the basis of that, I shall be objecting. In fact, today we received very good news as leaders of political parties. I am sure even the secretary generals of all the other political parties are happy that the High Court has agreed with us. The National Assembly cannot just unilaterally through a supplementary budget, remove all the money that has been allocated to Political Parties Fund. I am happy with Justice Mwita. He has said that once the money is appropriated by the National Assembly, it cannot be reduced through an Appropriation Act as it happened in the first Supplementary Budget of September, 2023, which reduced the Political Parties Fund by almost Kshs800 million when we only had Kshs1.6 billion. Going forward, I have taken the liberty of sharing that decision with Members of the National Assembly at least those from my party who sit on the Justice and Legal Affairs, the Finance and National Planning and Budget and Appropriations Committees of the National Assembly. They need to take note of what the court has said. One of the most frustrating things is that at least for us in the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and with the Political Parties Fund, we have more than enough court orders. We have a court order that awarded us Kshs6 billion a few years back. It is now at Kshs10 billion. Nobody is bothered about honouring that court order. When we hear people pontificate out there that they are a rule of law government and yet they have active court orders that they are ignoring, we know these are hypocrites. On this particular one, I support the committee that we cannot have a situation where members of the secretariat are threatened with sanctions for advising this House to go to court when there is obvious injustice that has been meted on this particular House. Lastly, is a matter that Sen. Cherarkey, the Senator for Nandi County, spoke about. On the question of Joint Sittings, this is why I have always pleaded with my"
}