Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1593310,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1593310/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 778,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Homa Bay Town, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Peter Kaluma",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " The Rt. Hon. Prime Minister Raila Amolo Odinga. We, therefore, agree on points of convergence like equity and inclusivity. We were punishing him because he went beyond the party in the fight for human rights. You must wait for the party and go together when you are in one. On those points of convergence, we have agreed that we will help the President and his party in holding our place under Article 4; where we have convergences of ideals and manifesto provisions. That is to hold the country together and stabilise our governance. There is nothing unconstitutional there. Hon. Temporary Speaker, I oppose this Bill. I have never in my life encountered a Bill from the Senate that seeks to erode and undermine our democracy, and seeks to neuter the governance of our political parties than this one. This Bill may appear big but it is doing one thing; it is replacing the Office of the Registrar of Political Parties (ORPP) with a commission of seven. Simple. The other details Hon. Caroli is talking about is around transferring the current functions of the Registrar of Political Parties to a commission. The question to us is how much function is in the ORPP, that would merit our moving the number of people in charge of those functions from one to seven? In India, one of the largest democracies on this side of the world, the entire electoral commission, has only three commissioners appointed by the Prime Minister directly. Without these manoeuvrings we do here, an office whose function is merely to register entities that qualify as political parties, to remove briefcase parties from the register, and deal with those few issues we have there. We are saying that we now need to change from a Registrar of Political Parties to a whole commission of seven, in a country where we know the salaries, remuneration and facilities around those commissioners are defined by another independent commission. You will have seven people who need cars, need pay in those hundreds of thousands and millions we are talking about, and who need facilities. This will stretch the fiscal space in our economy. For what purpose? This provision is ill-advised and we cannot have it. There is also some undue obsession with odd numbers in the formation of our commissions. In the United States of America (USA), there is something called The Federal Electoral Commission which deals with campaign financing; not elections: Three Republicans, three Democrats. Sometimes, they are that way and at times, there is an independent. However, they are six. The selection panel that deals with the composition of electoral commission in South Africa has four people sitting in offices. People who, if they gave the country wrong commissioners, they are there to be punished and disciplined for among other reasons, misconduct. They are: the person heading the Constitutional Court, I think invariably the Chief Justice, the Public Protector who is the equivalent of the ombudsman here, the Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission and the Gender Commission. What is our obsession with seven? That you ask the minority to give us three, majority three, then we will have someone elected to join there. Why do we form commissions beginning with the idea that there will be a dispute and disagreement to be resolved? That is why we think quagmire. Even for the electoral commission, instead of just doing straightforward things, we are thinking, ‘‘oh, bring from this so that we have odd numbers.’’ The obsession with odd numbers is not necessary and should not be there. Hon. Temporary Speaker, see what is proposed for the role of this Commission in Clause 33A. That this Commission shall be in charge of the management of the Political Parties’ Fund established under the Act. Where is the mandate of the registrar and the political The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}