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{
    "id": 1494679,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1494679/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 396,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "the Bomas of Kenya, where for the next one week the whole country comes to a standstill. That is a barbaric behaviour. It is really unfortunate. I am speaking like this because we just watched elections in a first world country. Elections were held where more than 130 million people voted. After about five hours, you could get an indication of who took the lead. In fact, if you have an interesting candidate like the President-elect of the United States of America (USA), he did not even wait for other states to declare their results. Once it became apparent that he was going to garner the magical 270 electoral college votes, he went ahead and gave his victory speech. The losing candidate also held back for a while. Eventually, in less than 24 hours after the election, she gave her concession speech and life moved on. In even more advanced democracies because a few months ago, I was in the United Kingdom (UK) when they were voting, even on the election day, you could hardly tell that there was any ongoing electoral process. This intense litigation, agitation and fights that we have at the Bomas of Kenya are all a product of a trust deficit. The many legislations that we have passed here over the years in this House, most of the time just a few days before election, are to address some of these fears. One of the things I must appreciate about this Bill that came out of--- Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I must, first, declare that this is one of the so-called National Dialogue Committee (NADCO) Bills that came out of a negotiated dialogue process at the Bomas of Kenya, where yours truly was part and parcel of the team that sat there. We had representation from Azimio la Umoja One-Kenya Coalition and Kenya Kwanza Coalition. There are many issues that Kenyans raised about our electoral processes when they came and made presentations before us. You will listen to some of the proposals. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, listening to some of the proposed amendments that are being added into our election laws, if we are not careful, our election law book may end up being the largest in the world very soon. This caused by the principle of putting in writing the minutest of procedures; things that are obvious to other countries. However, given that we are an extremely litigious country and our Judiciary does not help our cause because they agree with people that consider nuisance litigants by raising issues that are so mundane, we ended up litigating on every minute details of our electoral processes. In other countries, they are not things that people argue about. In typical fashion of our Judiciary, sometimes they agree with them that it is not written in law or our Constitution and therefore the petition succeeds. However, given that this is our home and we do not have another home, we have to learn to live with each other. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, there are about 39 Clauses in this Bill addressing many of the issues that have been of concern to Kenyans. As we read and give proposals to Bill, I hope the House will agree with us and put this in legislation. The last thing I appreciate about the genius of this legislation before I get into the details of the Bill is that in all other elections from 2017 and 2022, we have fought in this House while trying to amend election laws a few months to election time. If you read part of our election management processes, what forms the basis of many of the electoral processes is the so-called Kriegler and Waki Report that came up after the disputed 2007 Elections. One of the quoted phrases and recommendations in that 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."
}