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{
    "id": 496100,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/496100/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 1082,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2712,
        "legal_name": "Tom Joseph Kajwang'",
        "slug": "kajwang-tom-joseph-francis"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Temporary Deputy Chairman, this is seeing that you have studiously guided us this far. I have been sitting here and studying the contents of this Bill silently, but as we are now going into this section, I see a constitutional problem in terms of something in public law, which translates to settlement of dispute. I know that the Committee wants to create a system in which disputes can be resolved very fast, and in a way that is not very expensive. If you read clause 128, although it is not part of what the Chair is trying to delete or add, it is the substance of the Bill and will remain so. What will remain, therefore, is the Cabinet Secretary, the mediation process and the judicial process. I wish my senior, who sits in that Committee, had just advised them to name it and have the High Court; you talk of a judicial process, but it is very ambiguous; a judicial process can be anything. I am trying to read it in advance; because under Clause 30 the Chair moved the amendment, thereby taking away the invitation of the Chief Justice to be able to bring what would have been a judicial process. I heard hon. Members congratulating it and thought it was good; now as I am reading it, perhaps, you shoud have taken better counsel on this matter. When you read the clause which is ahead, which is 130, it clothes the Cabinet Secretary with judicial powers. Clause 129 talks about the things which Cabinet Secretaries should do or the disputes that he should handle, but when you go to clause 130, it tells you how the Cabinet Secretary will go about his duty. There is a memorandum and a statement of claim; this is the kind of thing that you do when you go to a court of law. Now that could have been fine, but the problem is when it is given to the Cabinet Secretary. There is a problem of separation of powers, because a Cabinet Secretary is the hand of the Executive. These are judicial powers; even if we describe him as Cabinet Secretary the duty that he will do is a court process. So, you will find yourself in a situation where we are giving the Executive judicial powers. I wish that the Committee could have sat on this a little more and refined it. I see a situation where this part of the law will be struck down every so often by the courts because you are giving judicial power to a body which is administrative. It could have been quasi judicial, but at the moment we want to make it almost something which looks like a court of law; we are confusing powers. Just to wind up, when we had problems with the Cabinet Secretaries, it was because of conflict of powers, separation of powers. This is now what we have come to; we are giving Cabinet Secretaries powers which are reposed in courts of law. The Committee could have looked at it and seen where to locate these powers properly."
}