Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 461761,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/461761/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 318,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Limo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1915,
        "legal_name": "Joseph Kirui Limo",
        "slug": "joseph-kirui-limo"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this chance to contribute to this important Bill. First, I thank the Departmental Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs for bringing this Bill to this House early enough. We know in this country we are used to bringing new rules and laws during election time. However, this Bill has come at the right time so that we can have enough time to ventilate. Unfortunately, I have realized that most of the Members are not very interested and this is dangerous for democracy because we witnessed last time, just before elections, laws which were created to promote democracy were changed in the last minute. Of interest are the election law and the Political Parties Act which were changed in the last minute. I would like to say that this Bill will promote democracy. It will promote democracy because the greatest enemy of democracy in this country is financing and the nomination process. There is a notion in this country that the people who have money are the ones who are taking over leadership. I would like to thank the people of Kenya because if you look at the elections that we conducted in 2013, you will find that this House witnessed the biggest number of young people, including myself join this House and the Senate. This was only possible because the people of Kenya realized that leaders are not elected on the basis of how much they give. In the past, we found that leaders who had done very well were not elected because they were not giving out money. There are leaders who are either born or made. To actualize this Bill, we need to pay attention to capacity building of our citizens because most of them do not know that they are actually the bosses of this country. They are supposed to be given proper information through capacity building which unfortunately comes just before elections and they have very little time to internalize that there are very clear qualities of choosing a leader and not through financing. Financing of election campaigns is ideally supposed to cater for movement or posters. But in the past, it was used to coerce the electorate in the last minute to change and they are left to suffer for the next five years. It is important for the citizens of this country to realize that a decision which is normally made during elections mostly takes less than a minute but a wrong decision takes five years to reverse. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this Bill also seeks to ensure that even if we are financing our elections and campaigns, we are supposed to finance using legal and acceptable sources. Hon. Millie Odhiambo has mentioned something very crucial here that we need to take into account, especially people who have spouses who are not Kenyans. We need to move amendments to make this Bill more realistic. I also support this Bill because it has put control in terms of penalties. When we are making laws in this country, we also need to do what we call risk assessment so that they cannot be abused. We have realized that we can make laws which can be abused by The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}