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"speaker_name": "Ms. Odhiambo",
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"legal_name": "Alfred Bwire Odhiambo",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this Bill. In supporting this Bill, I want to join those who have talked about the role of victims. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this is a very revolutionary piece of legislation and I would like to commend the Tenth Parliament for coming up with very revolutionary pieces of legislation. Only recently, we saw an amendment to the Constitution by a way that is not known to many lawyers, which would call either by importation of legislation or by annexture. I hope this House will be bold enough to continue making enactments that are this progressive. However, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would want to say that in relation to the trend that we are taking, it would be prudent that if we are focusing on the right of criminals, at the same time we should give more comprehensive attention to the rights of the victims. Last year, I was actually privileged to assist the Kenya Police in developing a comprehensive paper on victim support. One of the things that was very clear was that we have neither law nor policy on victim support in this country. Unless we are careful, we will have a situation that was witnessed with the Kenya Prisons Service, where we paid much more attention on the prisoners at the expense of the warders and we can see the results. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, if we are not careful, we will have a situation where we will soon be seeing victims on the streets because we are paying much more attention on the accused persons than we are on the victims. Therefore, I would like to urge the Attorney-General that at the same time that we are enacting or doing these amendments, we should, at the same time, come up with a comprehensive law on victims. I noticed that this Bill makes a cursory mention of victims by referring to the victim impact statements. If you actually look at progression in other countries, you would realise that they have very comprehensive policies or laws on the same. Therefore, I hope that the Attorney-General will take cognisance of that. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, whereas I also wish to support this Bill, I would want to throw caution that, in this country where we are actually facing a challenge of corruption, such a process may actually be abused. Therefore, we must have in place very, very tight laws that would ensure that it is not subject to abuse or corruption. Therefore, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would want to make reference to Section 137(o) May 6, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 853 which says: \"The Attorney-General may make rules for the better carrying into effect the provisions of this part\" I would want to urge that there should be an amendment making it obligatory upon the Attorney- General to make rules and not discretionary. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also want to commend the Attorney-General for making provisions exempting cases relating to sexual offences from this Bill. In the same vein, I noticed that the Attorney-General has also got discretion to exempt certain cases. I would want to urge that cases relating to children under the Children Act should also be made clearly non-discretionary and should be provided for explicitly the same way we provided to cases relating to sexual offences. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, again, we know that the country is going through a plethora of reforms. Despite that, we know that there is a crisis of confidence in our public institutions. Because of this, it would be very prudent that the authority for negotiating should not be taken away from the Office of the Attorney-General and should only go as far as State Counsels but not to public prosecutors. All practising lawyers know the kind of confidence we have in our public prosecutors; first, by virtue of their education and secondly, by virtue of their training that does not solicit a lot of confidence in the way they handle cases, especially those related to children and women. I, therefore, urge for an amendment that will not give the authority to all public prosecutors, but instead put it to the level of State Counsels. Finally, this Bill provides an opportunity for the Attorney-General to make provisions relating to lawyers as private prosecutors. I know that under the Sexual Offences Act, the Attorney- General had made a commitment to do this, but in practice we have not seen it happen. This, therefore, actually provides an opportunity for the Attorney-General to bring into effect the role of lawyers as private prosecutors in selected cases, including those related to sexual offences. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}