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"id": 42301,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Orengo",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Lands",
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"id": 129,
"legal_name": "Aggrey James Orengo",
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"content": " Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I similarly want to thank the Minister for Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs for the work he has done in successfully piloting this Bill through the stages and also doing a lot of preparatory work that goes to demonstrate the spirit and the passion that he has had in the whole process of reforming the Judiciary. I would want to urge him to continue on that road, but remember that we are always there to assist when it is necessary. You will remember there used to be the old Court of Appeal of East Africa and that court, to some extent, was an available institution where the two countries in East Africa went overboard. Every citizen within East African region, especially on constitutional issues, would run to the old East African Court of Appeal, but down the line, the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal on constitutional matters was repealed by, I think it was Kenya first, because of questions dealing with sovereignty, so to speak. The question was sovereignty but it was dictatorship coming in gradually to affect our way of governance. Eventually, the Court of Appeal of East Africa was abolished through the repeal of the law as it existed then. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am saying that the Court of Appeal will be as good as it starts its very first work in this very important institution. It will determine the type of democracy that would emerge in this country. All great democracies, beginning from the United States or even England, you find that they were able to make those strides because of the standing of the Judiciary. They had to fight in many cases for their own independence. They did not agree with the Executive all the time. Therefore, I hope that both the Constitution and this legislation that we are passing have given the necessary autonomy to the Supreme Court which will defend the Constitution and resolve disputes between citizens and the Government or between the various levels of Government, namely, between counties and the National Government. I hope that the bad history of the past will be forever thrown into the dustbin of history. Just to give an illustration, there are a lot of Kenyans who went to detention. A lot of them were detained without trial, kept in custody for a long time, including my learned friend, Mr. Imanyara. One would have thought that if you went to the Supreme Court of the land, you would get justice in that exalted institution, but our Court of Appeal and the Judiciary tended to be more executive than the Executive and, therefore, every genuine plea or entreaty made by the citizens to that court came to naught. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I hope that with the support of the Ministry of Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs, those reformers within the Government and the Government as a whole will make sure that democracy is properly grounded in this country, so that when we retire we may write something - I am glad that probably when the Minister for Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs retires he will write books about this entire process. I hope that this process will form one of the chapters that one would be proud to write about, both about what Parliament did and what the Supreme Court came to be."
}