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"id": 315037,
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"speaker_name": "Ms. Amina Abdalla",
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"legal_name": "Amina Ali Abdalla",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. I wish to thank the two Members who have spoken on the Bill. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the development of this Bill has taken over three years and it has been extensively reviewed. So, I would just like to respond to what Dr. Kones said about a maximum of 28 days. That is a valid request and we intend to look into it. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I need to make the House note that the lack of this regime of how to scrutinize delegated legislation can put us in a very difficult situation as a country. For example, in the Elections Act, we had said that we were not going to pass any election related regulation, unless it is passed by the House, which is one of the procedures proposed by the legislation. The Elections Act states that the regulations on elections should be ready six months to election, which means that on Tuesday next week, all the regulations should have been gazetted and passed. We also, as a House, had said that we will need to scrutinize and amend them appropriately. Those regulations have not even been tabled in the House. That means that even if they were tabled today, the House would have only one-and-a-half working days to look at them. These are regulations that have a major bearing on Kenya having peaceful elections. So, this is history where the Executive, in whichever form, does not respect Cap.2 of our laws which states that every regulation and any delegated legislation must be tabled in the House and cannot be valid unless passed by the House. This Act is not being observed. The only way to observe it is to have a regime that provides for the procedure to follow for each type of regulation. There are regulations that require public consultation and have financial implications for members of the public and all those areas. Without this regime, now that we are moving to a Presidential system of Government, we will have a lot of issues with the next Executive, because if there are no penalties when they do not table these regulations, they will have no incentive to table them. The Committee on Delegated Legislation will be a toothless bulldog if the regulations and clarity on how to go about tabling the regulations are not clear. I think that with the problems that we have seen in delegated legislation where Ministers have taken over powers that have not been given to them by the parent Act; where they have abused the powers that have been given to them; where they have made regulations that not only fail to conform to the parent Act but also even do not conform to the Constitution, that can only be tamed if we have a procedure that clearly deals with that. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, as I said before, we, as a Committee of Delegated Legislation, have had difficulties working on new regulations, mainly because we have been bogged down by non-compliance to the regulations that have been drawn up by Ministers and that have had problems. We appreciate that the regulations produced are very many, but clearly the Bill shows that the depth at which we are going to be scrutinizing is different depending on the powers. But more importantly, it gives caution to us, as a House, when we make regulations, to conform to Article 94(6) of our Constitution that requires that when we give delegated power to anybody, we clearly state the extent of that power and how that power will be scrutinized should it be abused. So, this Bill further intends to repeal Sections 27 and 34 of Cap.2, which have been inefficient in ensuring that members of the Executive conform to tabling regulations."
}