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"content": "First of all, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is the difference of this Constitution and the way it used to be before. We used to do these lists after elections. It was done in a very tricky manner. It was done from an office or some hotel somewhere and submitted. It was a Mickey Mouse game. The reason for the decision to prepare these lists 45 days prior to elections was to deal with that problem. But we have also had emerging issues, looking at this system. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, most people did not realize the impact of that nomination and the party list. In fact, having served in a National Executive Committee (NEC) of a party, we had very interesting debates later when people were coming to ask whether we had done the lists, yet they were already done 45 days prior to the elections. We also had issues with members who felt that, as Sen. Wako has said, they lost the election, but their people had been nominated to the county assemblies. We have cases in my party where some have even threatened to remove some Members of the County Assembly (MCAs) because they do not think that they favour them. These are the issues that we are dealing with. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is the scenario of Kiambu County. At one time when the Speaker was under siege and was about to be removed, I remember the Deputy Speaker of that county actually ruling that they could not pass a motion to remove the Speaker, because the county assembly was not fully constituted. I could only read doublespeak. First of all, how was the Deputy Speaker elected if they could not be removed when the others were not on board? These are the issues that we have to deal with and we have learnt our lessons. We saw the tussle between the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and Members. We also saw the tribunals taking so long. We saw injunctions and that process took about four months. That meant that these members had to play catch-up, as we all have been told here. They missed out and as you realize only about 4 per cent of the elected MCAs were women. That is 68 out of 1,450 MCAs. We had a few young people and people with disabilities. We cannot audit this success if we do not let them have the chance to serve in Committee or even vie to be deputy speakers and chairpersons of committees. As I speak, you will realize that in some of the counties, like Nairobi, out of 14 committees only one is headed by a woman. That case is replicated in very many other counties. We have to correct that. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have noted several issues that we need to improve in this Bill. I hope that we will do so in the Committee Stage. I want to specifically note the intervention that was done by the Senator for Homa Bay, Sen. Kajwang, on taking care of death as an eventuality, because we are all mortal. If we then hold county assemblies that they do not hold their first sitting and then someone dies, that needs to be taken care of. I hope that we will be able to do that in the Committee Stage. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this being a very progressive Bill, we cannot reverse back the time. If we could, we could do it better. However, since the ones that are there now are already in office and a lot of water has gone under the bridge, I hope that with this amendment, we will be able to deal with the circus with the IEBC, especially with the party lists. If anyone has a contest with them, they can go to court, like we have in the National Assembly and Senate. We should have a clear nomination procedure, such that this list is very final. The moment the election then is done, these names will be gazetted. The reason we also took very long with that list was because the IEBC took very long to"
}