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{
    "id": 359258,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/359258/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 543,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Sakaja",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13131,
        "legal_name": "Johnson Arthur Sakaja",
        "slug": "johnson-arthur-sakaja"
    },
    "content": "Thank you very much, hon. Deputy Speaker. I would like to reluctantly support the Report. The reason I want to reluctantly support is because we realize that we are in a new dispensation that is, indeed, presidential. It is clear, and I am sure we have quite a number of constitutional lawyers in this House, that in a presidential system, the work of oversight and watchdog is the work of the entire Parliament. It is Parliament in its entirelity that is supposed to play that role. The danger that we have in passing these amendments, in as much as I understand that we are in an intervening period; we are in transitional mode and we still have hangovers of a Westminster system, is that we give the implications and assumptions to all other committees that are not oversight committees. Each and every committee in this House has an oversight role to play. There is no Government in this House. There is no Opposition in this House. This is the first House of Parliament in the new constitutional dispensation. What happens is that we set a precedent. That is because you will have the other committee members considering themselves as an extension of the Government or others considering themselves not to be playing an oversight role. The constitutional lawyers in this House will also tell you that there is no presidential system anywhere in the world with an equivalent of a PIC or PAC. That is because each and every committee plays that role. It would have been my prayer – and I hope eventually we will do away with those two committees and ensure that each and every committee receives a copy of the Auditor- General’s report in the line of their departments and prosecute it. That is when this Parliament will actually live to play its full role."
}