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{
    "id": 1494700,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1494700/?format=api",
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    "content": "The spirit of Article 159 of our Constitution is to do substantive justice and not to pay undue regard to technicalities of procedure. I know those who practice law in this House such as you Mr. Temporary Speaker, understand how important this amendment will be to lawyers. Additionally, they proposed amendments to Section 82, on access to information including technology used in an election. We are trying to cure the problems that we all saw during the Election Petition that was filed ensuing from the 2022 general election. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, if you can recall, in 2017 the Supreme Court issued an order for that technology to be released. We were told that the lawyers in France had not woken up. When the lawyers in France woke up, we were told the technology is also hosted in the United States of America (USA). The lawyers in USA were asleep. We waited till 8.00 p.m. which in US was about midday and still the technology was not availed. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we are making a proposal here that the Commission should ensure that there is access of information including any technology that is used in an election. This is a public money. When we employ technology, we are using the taxpayer’s money. We want Kenyans to have easy access to information so that everything is transparent. The spirit in Articles 80, 81 and 82, is that our election should be transparent and verifiable. There is no way an election can be verifiable if we are not making technology available. That is in the spirit of making Kenyans to have faith and confidence in an electoral process. It was our prayer in the National Dialogue Committee (NADCO), that in the 2027 elections, we should not have a dispute. Everything should be so transparent that at the time we conclude the elections and a candidate is declared, every Kenyan should accept that truly that was the choice of the people. The other problem and I am sure most of us who are candidates have experienced is delay which is being addressed in Clause 39. The proposal there is that each polling station should have a returning officer and once you tally the votes you make a declaration. However, there has been a problem before. You are aware that you can have a polling station that is the closest to the constituency tallying centre. Nonetheless, there can be unreasonable delay in releasing results. You finish counting even at 8.00 p.m. but the presiding officer will tell you that they are unable to announce results utill the following day. In Clause 4, we are saying that the results should be tallied within two hours. Within two hours results should be released, everything fed into the electronic system and everybody has access to the results. If you unreasonably delay announcement of results, there should be consequences. In 2013, I did an Election Petition for a candidate in an election in Nyaribari Chache. While we were looking through the transmission of results to the tallying centre at Gusii, we discovered that the polling station that was closest to the tallying centre, was the last one to declare and transmit results. When we requested the court and the court ordered scrutiny, we found that there was a lot of tampering of results from that polling station. At times presiding officers delay 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."
}