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{
    "id": 328552,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/328552/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 255,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ms. Amina Abdalla",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 382,
        "legal_name": "Amina Ali Abdalla",
        "slug": "amina-abdalla"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. I wish to second this Motion. In seconding the Motion, I wish to alert the Members of this House that the amendments that we will be moving in this Bill will fall into four categories. The first category is where we will establish whether these regulations are compliant with the Constitution. Under that category, we will be deleting the provisions that Members of Parliament should have 1,000 supporters and the Members of the Senate should have 500 supporters. That provision is inconsistent with the Constitution. Apart from the President, the provision for subscribers is confined to independent candidates. We will also be proposing a lot of input, including requirements of Article 35. The Article requires the IEBC to go further than publishing to publicizing any register or document that they may be having. We will also be noting that the IEBC left out very important aspects that are part of their constitutional mandate, namely that they should be dealing with disputes coming out of political parties nominations. In these regulations, they did not provide that the same is provided for in Article 88(4)(e) of the Constitution and Section 77 of the Elections Act. There are also several gaps in these regulations that we need to deal with, mainly in relation to criminalizing campaign activities that are already ongoing. As you know, all of us on weekends go to campaign activities that these regulations have intended to criminalize. So, we will be bringing in provisions for them to only monitor the period of intensive campaign where an individual is moving to publicize their candidature. There are issues that have been proposed here that seem to be inconsistent with the wishes of the stakeholders that the Minister for Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs has already alluded to. We have received a lot of input from the members of the disability movement, who feel that the nomination fees are is high. In fact, they propose that it is over 1,000 per cent higher than what was charged in the last elections. So, in the proposed amendments, you will note that we are proposing to amend these increases to 100 per cent, which is more consistent with the requirement that the IEBC will need to have funding for processing the nominations of persons. In appreciating that the Exchequer is funding the elections, we will not be entertaining the exorbitant figures that they have proposed. Finally, we will be dealing with cleaning up. We wish to note, as a Committee, that this is the first set of regulations of any legislative nature that has come in a very poor state to this House which is uncharacteristic of other Government departments. With those few remarks, I beg to second."
}