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{
    "id": 491588,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/491588/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 208,
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    "content": "he runs away the police have notified somebody else and he finds a barricade. He gets out and kills somebody. Where does the chain of events to the robbery stop? If I went to the public, spoke and electrified it and as the youths are going away, excitedly talking about what I said, and on the way they run into the distinguished Senator for Nakuru, punch and give him a black eye, I remain vicariously responsible. That is called accessories to the crime. I started it with my talk, excited the second person who met resistance from excitement and meted out illegal justice to that person. We are all culpable in law; vicarious responsibility and the chain of crime from one causation to another. So, sometimes these things happen and even when we are lawyers we forget where the spark was. The cure to this is for all of us to be very careful in whatever we do. Sometimes you can carry somebody else’s skunk and it can smell on you forever and he who gave you the skunk is sitting there pretty and laughing. He ends up saying: “Why did you not refuse if you thought that it was wrong?” Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, with these powers and privileges, MCAs should also now know that they can legislate without fear or favour. However, there is a difficulty in the county assemblies. I have talked to the Speaker and discussed with Sen. (Prof.) Kindiki about this. The devolution came and brought the assemblies, but we have not given sufficient manpower to the assemblies. Probably, you have talked to your own assemblies and they have told you that they are in dire need of legislative drafters. They have good ideas, but they do not have people who can translate them into Bills, to be debated into law. I think that this Senate must do something to help. I notice that we have an engagement with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that has been funding programmes. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, it is not enough to be given privileges and immunities which you cannot use for productive development in your county or country. We need to engage the State University of New York (SUNY) and UNDP. Indeed, I am very disappointed with the Transition Authority (TA), because it should also have even secured expatriate support for mass training. We have lawyers in the market who are looking for jobs, but they are not trained drafters. There are special courses for legislative drafting which are offered under the auspices of the Commonwealth. During my time we used to have a small class at the School of Law. We can train lawyers who are interested in being legislative drafters and give them a crash programme. We can then ask them even to give pro bono services. The Law Society of Kenya (LSK), in the enabling statute, is enjoined to be part of the support service to the process of legislation in the country. The LSK can volunteer lawyers to go through these crash programmes. Today is not like those days of your time, when you had to come all the way from Kuria to Nairobi to find a lawyer, to go and defend you in a theft case in Kuria. Today, there are lawyers virtually everywhere. If we ask them to volunteer, we will have more than enough volunteers in every county. They can spend a little of their time to give back to society, by helping the county assemblies to draft good laws, instead of hearing that some counties are engaged in some very unacceptable taxation measures against citizens. We have heard of the ridiculous case of taxing chicken and all manner of things. In Kiambu County, if you remember, they wanted to tax graves. I heard in one county they were taxing a truck carrying sodas and then there was a separate tax on each crate and bottle of soda. This is ridiculous. They are not passing bylaws, they are passing laws. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate"
}