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"id": 1427594,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cherarkey",
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"legal_name": "Cherarkey K Samson",
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"content": "you cannot limit rights unjustifiably. Also, in Article 38 on political rights, there must be justifiable reasons as to why you deny a particular right. Let governors have the opportunity to run for whatever seats they want. I saw the former Governor of Busia, Hon. Sospeter Ojaamong, ran for MP, Teso North Constituency seat. I know also a former Senator, the late Godliver Omondi, ran for an MCA seat. We should not fear political competition. Let the governors run for the seats that they want, including but not limited to the Presidency. I know in a fair competition of politics, we must ensure the tenets of democracy under Articles 10, 38, and 24, that everybody has a right to run for any seats that they wish to run for. We should not limit it at any given time. We can never be a prescriptive nation and should not pass laws based on prescription. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I sit as the Vice-Chairperson of the Senate County Public Accounts Committee. Let us assume that our committees function optimally, although, we have a challenge and we are aware that in this Parliament, the Joint Services has more money than the Senate. I am informed that as we go for this working recess, committees do not have even a penny or shilling to even visit the KICC to check on its status or that roundabout if it had a problem. This is because the Joint Services has a lot of money than the Senate and the National Assembly combined, but we do not know what they do with that money. We wanted to do county visits. How can we have value if we cannot visit Bomet and look at the county projects? How can we have value if we cannot go to Nandi and see the stalled projects that Gov. Sang is presiding over? How can we visit Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital where mothers are detained after giving birth, but they are unable to pay the hospital maternity fees? How can we visit the Kisii Referral Hospital? Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the other day, courtesy of your office and allocation, we visited Isiolo and got firsthand information. We fought here and sent our Senators for mediation; we wanted to give counties Kshs415 billion and wanted value for that money. How can we be allocating counties Kshs415 billion, which was reduced to Kshs400 billion, and yet, we cannot have administrative resources to oversight the same resources and projects? This is sad to many committees because they will not even afford water in their committee meetings or logistical support. We are not saying we be given resources to travel outside the country. We just need resources for committees. This brings me to this other point. The reason Sen. Chimera has proposed in this Bill that former governors should not be senators is because of their audit reports. For example, there are former Senators who are now governors. If we were to resource our committees such that by the time, the 2027 elections are done, the CPAC should have considered the audit reports of FY 2026/2027. The governor serving his second term, like the Bungoma Governor, can run for Senator and come here. That is the point we are trying to make here; that it is our own making. We are shooting our feet. We cannot be saying that the reason we do not want governors to cool off for five years is because of audit queries and yet, our committees are being crippled. We are Parliament and we appropriate the money to other arms of the Government. We appropriate The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only.A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and Audio Services,Senate."
}