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"speaker_name": "Hon. Cheboi",
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"content": "Secretary but on average, not more than five questions are to be directed to each Cabinet Secretary. That is to say that they will be able to prepare themselves sufficiently and bring reasonable answers to hon. Members and, I am sure, to the satisfaction of their constituents. Hon. Speaker, as I have indicated, supplementary questions will be allowed, so long as they relate specifically to the original questions. Sometimes, there is a tendency by hon. Members to ask supplementary questions which are different from the original question. In this particular case, hon. Members will be encouraged to proceed and seek specific questions on which they would want answered. Further, in this particular one, the beauty of it is that we shall have verbatim recording of the proceedings and so, it will go to the HANSARD. So, if a Cabinet Secretary indicates that he is going to do something, he can be held to account on the issue and promises that he will have made in terms of answering questions. The Cabinet Secretaries should have no major problem with this arrangement. First, it was this particular Parliament which dealt with their case of appointments, through the Appointments Committee. So, as far as we are concerned, hon. Members and Cabinet Secretaries, much as we are in the Legislature and they are in the Executive, are supposed to be as friendly as possible. There should be no fear from any quarter whatsoever. It has been said that probably Members of Parliament are trying to amend the Constitution through the backdoor, using the House rules. That would be furthest from the truth. It is either out of ignorance or out of an issue of people not having gone into detail of what Members of Parliament intended to achieve. Hon. Speaker, the issue is effective representation of the people. As I have indicated, already, in the Constitution, Article 153 takes care of this arrangement. That is all Members of Parliament intends to do. Therefore, I encourage Members of Parliament to quickly adopt this Report, because it is in the interest of not themselves only, but also in the interest of the nation as well as in the interest of the Cabinet Secretaries and the Executive. When the Cabinet Secretaries come to our Committees – something which they do anyway – they will be able to interact with hon. Members and see things from the perspective of the common mwananchi at the grassroots. After all, Members of Parliament are the ones who represent the people. Therefore, I would not really want to belabour this particular issue. I know hon. Members, and particularly Committee Chairpersons, who feel that their Statement requests are not responded to adequately. They will be able to deal with the Cabinet Secretaries themselves and extract the kind of answers that they would require. In this particular case, the system of governance will not have changed at all. Hon. Speaker, some Members of the Rules Committee travelled to various other jurisdictions in the world, with similar governance structure like ours. I had an opportunity to be in France, under the leadership of the Speaker himself. Their system is almost a copy and paste of the Kenyan one. Legislators in France have an opportunity to interact with Ministers through a certain modified Question Time. It is very helpful. It is the most exciting bit of serving as a Member of Parliament. Therefore, what I just wanted to say by quoting those other instances – Senegal and several other jurisdictions, for example – is to say that the system of governance will be the same. We are still on a pure 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."
}