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    "id": 499705,
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    "content": "in his capacity as the Chairman of an independent commission under Chapter 15. This is the same way that Charles Nyachae is Chairman of the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution (CIC), the same way there is a Chairman of the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and all other independent constitutional commissions. They said that they had had procurement problems which are a function of the Judicial Service Commission. They invited the commissioners to come and shed light on the legal affairs of the National Assembly because there were questions of transparency, accountability and due process that have been raised. Curiously, the Chief Justice, all the judges and even the Commissioners who are not judges said that the Judiciary was immune, independent and cannot appear before Parliament and refused to appear before that Committee. First and foremost, in the Judicial Service Commission, there are people who are just advocates. Others are laymen and laywomen from the streets. They are not even judges. The Judicial Service Commission is just a Commission like the Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC), the CIC and other commissions. In that capacity, that Commission is under the supervision of the Parliament of Kenya; the National Assembly and the Senate. What is even more critical for us to understand, as a country, is that even the judges that sit in the Judicial Service Commission do not sit in the Commission as judges. They do not exercise the core functions of interpreting the law which is the core function of the Judiciary. They should and must appear before the relevant committees, not just of the National Assembly but of the Senate. However, they invoke some funny blanket immunity and yet they want us to pretend that we are happy when they intervene in our core mandate of legislation, oversight and representation. They think we will clap for them. I do not want to create the impression that the Senate is on a war path. If anything, we have been very lenient. I do not think that any other institution would have countenanced the kind of humiliation and shabby treatment that this Senate has received from the issues I have highlighted here. I want to take this opportunity to say that those who thought that the Senate of Kenya has no teeth to bite should watch this space going forward. I want to assure the country that we will stand firm. This is about devolution. Devolution is about the future and survival of Kenya. This is the only principle, if implemented, that can contain the kind of uprising, anger, dissent, and violence we are seeing among our people. Devolution dismantles Sessional Paper No.10 of 1965 which was brilliantly put by good people including former President Mwai Kibaki and Tom Mboya but which missed the paradigm of developing plural societies like Kenya by a wide margin. They missed it by a wide margin. Mr. Speaker, Sir, by plural societies, I mean societies with dual or even triple identities. The only solution to keeping a plural society together is to ensure that there is 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."
}