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"id": 331609,
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"content": "Board was not fully constituted. There are standards in all boards, committees in corporate as well as in public bodies. I believe that is what we are doing to make sure that this will never be challenged for that reason. The chain of other amendments is, for example, when we did the first one, we still had the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission. The law has since been changed to create the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission. We had the Police Complaints Commission. Now we have the National Police Service Commission. So, some of these things are purely to bring in line the new bodies that have already been created by law since the passage of the Vetting of Judges and Magistrates Bill. The most fundamental was when we changed the law, I think it was in Section 23, in 2011 and provided that for faster processing of the matter the magistrates should be vetted by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC). Obviously, you created a parallel system, where judges are vetted by a Board and the others by the JSC, which itself was never created for that reason. We are just reversing the matter to what it was before as a result of listening to input from the stakeholders. So, this to me is more of a tiding up Bill, tiding up in terms of sorting out the names of the Advocates Disciplinary Committee, the Public Complaints Standing Committee, Human Rights--- All those bodies are now being referred to differently as a result of passage of other laws. More importantly, we are now giving the Board the full power for its operation, whether or not there is vacancy because somebody has taken leave, somebody did not attend a meeting and we do not want that invalidated, especially given that we have become a very litigious society. Any action taken is now open to somebody going to court to challenge it; in fact, if people are not sitting in the right order during a meeting their decision could now be challenged. So, that is meant to close all those loopholes because this vetting of judges is critical for the purpose of ensuring that, that institution becomes like Caesar’s wife, that is above suspicion and reproach. For us in Parliament, we shall be vetted by the electorate. I am sure by 5th of March, the people who will be sitting here, will be people who will have been vetted by the electorate. For the Executive, they would have been vetted by the electorate? For the judges, the only fair way of doing it is creating these structures that will now clean it up, so that as we go to the next dispensation we are all moving with a new Judiciary, Legislature, Executive and a new Republic will have been created pursuant to the new Constitution; Kenyans will live happily thereafter. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with those words, I just wanted to confirm, again through my own understanding of this Bill, that, indeed, it makes the position better. It clears issues better. I want to persuade my colleague, hon. George Nyamweya, not to worry about it and to support us as we tidy up this Bill. As it were, we want to sort out the issues in the vetting of judges and magistrates. We hope that this exercise can be completed fast enough, so that as we move into the new Legislature and Executive we shall also have a newly vetted Judiciary to move Kenya into the next level come March, 5th, 2013. With those words, I support."
}