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{
    "id": 477922,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/477922/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 130,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ng’ongo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "Thank you for that, hon. Speaker. Maybe, we still require one more year for some hon. Members to learn these rules. I rose on a point of order to seek guidance from the Chair with regard to whether we should proceed with this Motion without amending the Act that puts this Commission in place. The National Cohesion and Integration Commission Act, 2008 has certain provisions and I want to restrict myself to just two areas. The first one, which I have just read out, is Section 19, which provides for the term of office for the commissioners, both the chairperson and the other eight commissioners. The chairperson and the commissioners shall hold office for a term of three years and shall be eligible for re-appointment for one further term of three years. Therefore, the thinking when we were enacting this law was to give the commissioners three years, which ended so many months ago, and the appointing authority could have chosen to give them a further term. Hon. Speaker, be that as it may, I am particularly concerned about the provisions of Section 22 of the Act, which sets out the conditions upon which the offices of the commissioners fall vacant. If you read the particular Section--- I tend to think that we needed to amend this Act before we proceed to fill the positions. This is because the only condition upon which the office of the chairperson or a commissioner shall become vacant is if one, the office holder dies, two resigns from office in writing, three is removed from office in accordance with provisions of Section 23, that is due to incompetence, gross violation of provisions of the Constitution etcetera. Four, is if he is convicted of an offence and sentensed to imprisonment; five is if he unable to discharge the functions of his office; six is if absent for three consecutive meetings and finally, is if declared bankrupt. Therefore, I would want to be advised under what law we are now filling these positions, given that they have fallen vacant and none of these conditions are fulfilled in the process that we are engaging in? Sub-section (2) says:- “The President shall notify every vacancy in the Gazette within seven days of the occurrence of the vacancy.” Hon. Speaker, these positions of commissioners fell vacant so many months ago and the President should have declared them vacant within seven days. Therefore, attempting to fill these positions at this time by recruiting new commissioners to this Commission--- I do not think we are following the provisions of this Act. We should have replaced them but we did not. I think the best thing we would have done was, first of all, to propose amendments to this Act by Parliament, and then go ahead and fill the 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."
}