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{
    "id": 1477212,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1477212/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 282,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Marakwet West, Independent",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Timothy Kipchumba",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you Hon. Deputy Speaker for granting me an opportunity to contribute to this very important Report. I rise to support this Report on the Consideration for Ratification of the Protocol to the Constitutive Act of the African Union relating to the Pan-African Parliament. In this country, we have an extremely progressive Constitution. Article 26 of the Constitution provides in very clear terms that any treaty ratified by Parliament or by Kenya shall constitute part of the laws of this country. Pan-African Parliament is a very important Parliament in enhancing democracy within the African continent. As a continent, we share a similar history and culture. It is only after the Berlin Conference of 1885 that this continent was divided and taken over by various colonial regimes. That is where we lost our identity and culture as the African continent. It is now time, as a country, we ratified this protocol so that we can go back and find our path which we lost. The Pan-African Parliament is very important because it is like a peer review in terms of our democracy in matters to do with human rights, where countries will have representatives at the highest level in the continent to share certain values that are admired across it. The only issue I have with this Report, looking at it critically, is this: under Article 118(1)(b) of the Constitution on public participation and Section 3 of the Treaty Making and Ratification Act 2012, the Committee placed advertisements in two local dailies on 16th November 2023, calling for submissions of memoranda on the subject matter. However, it goes further to say the Committee did not receive any memorandum for or against the ratification of the protocol. That is quite unfortunate because something must be wrong. Probably, the Committee did not give out proper notice for public participation because it cannot be true that no one in the Republic of Kenya managed to give an opinion on this protocol. It is something that can even be quashed by the courts. It is something that the Committee and this House need to take seriously because there was no input from the public as per the Report of this Committee."
}