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"id": 224616,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/224616/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Angwenyi",
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"speaker": {
"id": 326,
"legal_name": "Jimmy Nuru Ondieki Angwenyi",
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"content": "The second issue that we should address in this Bill is the issue of amorphous parties in this country, especially with the bait of being funded. Kenyans are very enterprising. After we pass this Bill, the next day even before the Bill is implemented, there will be about 1,000 parties in this country. People will see this as an avenue to make money. You will only need to form a party and you will be eligible to get public funds. Is that what we want? Do we want to give money to people to form political parties? We must address the issue of having national parties which have membership throughout the country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, why do we require the President to get 25 per cent votes in five provinces and yet we do not require his party to have 25 per cent of the registered voters in five provinces? We require the President to get 25 per cent votes in five provinces because we want him or her to look national. Why can we not have the same requirement for political parties? We should require that before a party is registered, it must have a threshold that will demonstrate that it is national. For example, suppose we say that the minimum membership for any party must be 50,000 registered voters in any province, that will make it possible for a party 960 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES April 25, 2007 to appear national. If you require a party to have only 200 people from a province, you will have a party with only 1,600 members in a population of 34 million people. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this Bill should have addressed the issue of membership threshold on the basis of regions. That is the only way we can avoid parties being regional, tribal and sometimes, canonistic. We have studied other democracies. For example, in the United States of America, you cannot register a political party unless you can raise more than 500,000 voters from 26 States, which are more than half the States in the USA. If you cannot have 500,000 voters in your party, that party cannot be registered. Why do we think that we have a better developed democracy than the USA, a democracy with has existed for over 200 years while ours has existed for only ten to 15 years? If we increase the threshold to 50,000 or 100,000 voters per province, we will reduce the number of parties in this country to manageable levels, such that, if we devote part of our Budget to them, it will be seen to have worked and it will not be too much for the nation. If we were to have 1,000 parties and we want to give to each one of them Kshs20 million to let offices, recruit officers and run around the country, that will add up to Kshs20 billion. Will this country be able to bear that kind of burden? We must address the issue of the threshold of membership in each province. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in this Bill, we have talked about an independent Registrar of Political Parties and we are taking him to Mr. Kivuitu, in the ECK. This is the person who refused to give the orange symbol to ODM, but when they gate-crashed into his meeting, they were promised a symbol and the next day, they were given. We want to have an independent Registrar of Political Parties in that office, so that we can gate-crash there and we get what we want. Is the problem today the fact that parties are registered by the Registrar of Societies or is it that we have not made a law to empower that person to effect his or her decisions independently? We can enact that law and he or she can make independent decisions in that office or preferably, get that Registrar in Parliament, where he can be accessed by the people who deal with parties. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if we increase the threshold and ensure that there is a difference of ideologies, then there will be about two or three parties in this Parliament. Therefore, that person will be able to manage those parties, ensure that their accounting is done properly and the funds they are given are properly utilised. He will ensure that their accounting is done well, the funds given to them are properly utilised, the ideologies of those parties do not change, or the parties do not merge, and that if parties wish to merge, they are de-registered, so that they merge with the parties whose ideologies match. I would suggest, therefore, that we do not transfer the Registrar of Political Parties, if we are going to have one, to the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK). We are still grappling with the problem of the independence of the ECK. I think that is a much more fundamental issue than the independence of the Registrar of Political Parties. As I have stated, I do think the Registrar of Societies has failed to register a party that was within the regulations of this country. So, I would have preferred that we de-link, completely, the Registrar of Political Parties from the ECK. Even if we were to address the issue of the independence of the ECK, we should not transfer the Registrar of Political Parties to the ECK. With regard to the sources of funds, we are saying that the Minister may provide funds. Suppose the Minister does not provide funds, how are we going to get funds? I thought that we should clearly have stated here that, maybe, 0.5 per cent or 1 per cent or 0.1 per cent of our Budget, or some other definite proportion of our revenue, will be devoted to this funding. We should even have said that, before that funding is released, the party itself will have to have some counterpart funds of some sort. Otherwise, the word \"may\" suggests that at one time the Minister may provide some funding while at other times he may not. Today, the Minister may give Kshs1 million, and April 25, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 961 the next day Kshs10. It will be within his or her discretion to give money to political parties. I do not think that is a law we want to make in this House, where we have got discretion as to what we want to give. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are saying that the money to be provided must be used to promote political parties. If any money is going to be used to promote political parties, it must be adequate, otherwise there is no use in giving a party Kshs1 million and expect it to promote its activities throughout the country. That amount will not even be enough to take a bus ride to all the constituencies in this country. So, some of these issues need to be, seriously, re- looked into. We are saying that the funds will provide a continuous vital link between the people and the organ of State. Where you have got 95 parties, how are they going to be linked with the people and the organ of State? You have got 95 parties, where only one party is ruling. How are you going to link a party with a membership of 200 people per province to the people of Kenya? The State organ is the ruling party, and the Government of that ruling party. How are you going to relate that to the people of Kenya when it can have a membership of 200 people in each of seven provinces and 3 million people in one province? Would you consider that party to have a link with the people of Kenya? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, some of the issues brought out by this Bill, therefore, need to be looked at more seriously and, maybe, amended to reflect what we intend to achieve. Is this money going to be paid directly or indirectly, and in accordance with which regulations? How are we going to promote a party unless it has people who are going to go out there and promote it? Are these people going to be volunteers or what? Are we going to pay them, either directly or indirectly? What will this money be for? Will it be for buying stationery? How is this money going to be used to promote a party? You are saying that you cannot remunerate anybody directly or indirectly from that Fund. Those are some of the clauses that we need to deal with. M. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Bill also says that we cannot source funds from abroad. If we have got people in the diaspora--- Recently, if it was not for the competition in Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), they would have raised millions of shillings in the United Kingdom (UK). I understand that Bishop Deya was ready to give them all the money he has got from selling all those kids. They would have brought that money to this country. How can we stop that? That is a major source of funds. We do not know how many kids Bishop Deya had sold."
}