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{
    "id": 478321,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/478321/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 529,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Eng.) Gumbo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 24,
        "legal_name": "Nicholas Gumbo",
        "slug": "nicholas-gumbo"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Deputy Speaker, as George Bernard Shaw once said, the moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it and become blind to all the arguments against it. This report, in my view, just like the Supreme Court ruling on the Presidential Petition before it, endeavours to give us reasons that sound good. What we need are good reasons why we should not be sending the IEBC commissioners packing. It is a fundamental requirement of democracy that any electoral process must accord citizens the freedom to exercise their political rights in a free and fair manner. Was this done? My submission is no. An electoral process should be conducted with sufficient fidelity to produce graceful winners, who can have the humility to embrace losers. Have we produced graceful winners? My submission is no. We have not produced graceful winners. While elections are supposed to re-unite us and bring us together, every five years we see a cycle of disunity and more disunity; people are set apart by elections as opposed to what we hope to achieve. Our electoral process, I submit, must change into one that can produce a winner who will inspire confidence and hope in the losers. He should also be a winner who can embrace even his worst critics. If you look at Article 251 of our Constitution, it is very clear on what the grounds for a petition are. We are missing the point here. The petition was about removing the commissioners as has been said by other speakers before me. I want us to agree on these fundamental things. Being in the Opposition is not a permanent thing. A lot of people who are in the Government now were in the Opposition at some point. I can assure you that a time is coming when you will be in the Opposition. So, let us look for laws that you will be comfortable with even when those laws are in the hands of your worst critics. Let us move forward and create laws for posterity. Let us create laws that do not look only at the present. They say that the best laws are laws which make you comfortable even if your worst enemy is the one in authority. Do we say so? We know that there are lots of structural faults not just with the IEBC but also with many of the commissioners. This is really what we hope to achieve. Clearly, there is no electoral process which is perfect. We do not seek to get a perfect electoral system. Can we make it better? Yes! Are there ways in which this House can come together in a bipartisan manner to make our electoral process better? Yes! That is what we should be looking at. Let us not look at it as if we are targeting anybody. This petition is not about the presidential petition. We all accept the fact that Uhuru Kenyatta is the President. Agreeing with it is not the issue. The Supreme Court gave the verdict. We accepted it even though we did not agree with it. We are not going back there. What we are saying is that there are fundamental problems with the IEBC. This House must come together to rectify those problems, if we are looking forward to electoral processes which bestow fidelity in the process and the participants in elections. With those remarks, I beg to oppose."
}