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{
    "id": 335902,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/335902/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 773,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Prof. Kamar",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 33,
        "legal_name": "Margaret Jepkoech Kamar",
        "slug": "margaret-kamar"
    },
    "content": " Mr. Temporary Deputy Chairman, Sir, I am glad the Attorney-General is here. We have a few lawyers in the room who can help us as well. When we say that Clause 60 be amended to delete the words, ‘but the person should not be entitled to legal representation within the institutional hearing”, what do we mean? Within the institutional hearing, it is indiscipline that is being addressed. It is not a court of law. I say this out of experience. I was the chair of a university council for eight years; as a principal of a college and as a Deputy Vice-Chancellor. There are occasions when lawyers have wanted to come into the university disciplinary sessions and we feel that if we allow lawyers, then it would mean that we allow lawyers to represent the university in dealing with these cases. That would make us look like a court. Actually, universities cannot do that because they do not have any capacity to do it. Therefore, anything that has to be dealt with by the courts, for example issues like rape, the student is expelled and the parents deal with the case in court. It is something that is quite delicate but when we say we are allowing legal representation during the institutional hearing, it may actually derail the cases. Some of the cases are extremely small but there is always temptation by a student who knows he or she is guilty to attach a lawyer to intimidate the committee and it can just be a mess. I am not comfortable with deleting that because the non-"
}