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{
    "id": 425092,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/425092/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 276,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. ole Ntutu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2535,
        "legal_name": "Patrick Keturet Ole Ntutu",
        "slug": "patrick-keturet-ole-ntutu"
    },
    "content": "this country. It is time for us to define who we are as a country. This is because the institution called marriage is the most important institution on earth. The smallest unit of a country is the family and then you go to the village, division, location, district, county and then country. If this institution is not strengthened and defined in law, we will end up having problems that we are having in our country. Hon. Deputy Speaker, middlemen in the corridors of justice took advantage of innocent Kenyans because they know of the complexities of these various laws. That is why you normally see many families in courts. It is because they do not know which law to use. However, now, it has been defined and we all know whether you belong to a Christian marriage or Islamic marriage or the customary one. The one thing I am happy about is Part II of this Bill. Here this law defines the minimum age of marriage. You realize that in our country we have so many communities. In the pastoralist communities people take advantage of the young girls. This law will actually curtail them from marrying young girls. I think early marriages will be a thing of the past. I want to urge my colleagues to now use this law, once we pass it, in our respective constituencies. We have to ensure that it is implemented and acted upon so that we save our young girls so that they can also become Members of this House one day. When you look at the issue of customary rights which is normally very ambiguous, people from the pastoralist communities know that customary laws have never been defined. I am a happy man today because this piece of legislation has now defined how to go about these customary laws. In this particular piece of legislation, this has been defined. The Bill also provides for registration of marriages. We will now have them in our database. With the new technology, we can now tell who is married and who is not. In this Bill, matrimonial disputes and proceedings have been defined. It is clear that if you divorce for one reason or another you now are in a position to know the procedure to be followed. This will bring sanity in our institution of marriage. With those few remarks I support. For those of you who have issues, please, bring them in the Third Reading stage so that we do away with the things that we do not need and we make this law very strict. Hon. Deputy Speaker, I support and thank you for the opportunity."
}