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{
    "id": 1480976,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1480976/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 209,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Mungatana, MGH",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "I do not believe that these improvements would be outside the purview of the NADCO agreements, but they would clarify what we mean or is meant to mean within this amendment Bill. I am looking at the proposed New Clause 38A and New Clause 39 that deal with declarations of results but they are not very clear. The Committee of the Whole will need to put some clarity into this. New Clause 39 talks about determination and declaration of results. It states that the Commission shall determine, declare, and publish the results of an election immediately after the close of the polling and results declared at the polling station shall be final. It goes on to say in New Clause 39(4) that for purposes of a presidential election, the commission shall tally, announce, and declare presidential results before tallying, announcing, and declaring results for other elective positions. We need to improve this. If tallying has been done for the other positions but the presidential tally has not been done, why should we delay the constituency returning officer by putting this requirement that we need to have presidential results first declared? I do not think this is a useful kind of legislation because it tends to try and manage the actual intelligence, or micromanage what constituency and county returning officer should do. Why should we wait for tallying of results of presidential candidates before we announce results of a Member of Parliament (MP) or Member of the County Assembly (MCA)? Why should we tie those together? An MCA does his or her own campaigns and the ballot box is separate. If they are done with counting and tallying, why should we delay the announcement if presidential results are a lot more yet we have finished with this one? Why not just remove this particular provision which seeks to micromanage constituency returning officers? Madam Temporary Speaker, I want to use this opportunity to give notice that this and others that I have seen need to be improved. Therefore, I will be bringing those improvements or further amendments to this Bill. I am looking at Clause 23, which deals with amendments to do with the procurement process for the technology to be used during counting. There are good provisions that have set out the kind of technology. I am happy to see that even the intellectual property rights of the technology that we are going to use during elections shall now, by law, vest in the Commission. So, the issue of having to access the servers, I do not know from which country or outside Kenya, has been dealt with by law and I think this is a good improvement in our system. However, there is something lacking in this provision. We need to have, by law, a requirement that the IEBC will have to do a trial run of the process. We have the political parties’ forum where all political parties have registered members. We need to have a trial run so that everybody can say that we went through the process. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) took us through the process. How a person is supposed to vote, how the tallying and transmission of results is supposed to be done, and how we will also have verification if we need to, so that, every political party signs to it and have fidelity to the law and to the reflection of the will of the people. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}