Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 548304,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/548304/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 284,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "May 6, 2015 SENATE DEBATES 36 Sen. (Prof.) Anyang’-Nyong’o",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, I rise to support this Bill by my colleague, Sen. Murungi; amending the Parliamentary Service Commission and establishing new structures and institutions that will better help manage Parliament. I listened very carefully to my colleague, Sen. (Prof.) Lonyangapuo, contributing to this Motion and citing Article 96 of the Constitution which establishes the role of the Senate as a House of Parliament. This is an article in the Constitution that is highly misunderstood or very unfortunately unappreciated in terms of its importance in the Constitution. If you read that article, you will find that this House has an enormous task to this nation, especially when the same Constitution establishes the two levels of Government. One of those levels of government is county governments. Therefore, an institution established at the national level to represent the counties and to serve to protect their interests and their governments is an extremely important institution. Madam Temporary Speaker, the next thing that we must ask ourselves as the Senate – this is very important – is that to what extent have we passed laws that will help us implement that article of the Constitution? A Constitution is usually written to establish general principles and values that govern or give sense to a nation. The general principles and values are found in the various chapters and articles of the Constitution. It is then left to the law-making agencies, the legislature, to pass laws that will bring to life those general principles, values and prescriptions. We have not yet passed enough laws in this House that will help implement Article 96 of the Constitution. We have laws like the County Governments Act which mainly concentrates on how county governments will be governed and various other laws establishing how the Senate will be involved in the budgeting system. That is not enough. We now need to sit down and carefully look at Article 96 and say that in the final analysis, how is this article going to be implemented? Sen. Murungi is now the first to attempt this by saying that the first thing that we should do is to make sure that as a House of Parliament, there is a way in which we shall manage ourselves within the framework of the Parliamentary Service Commission that will make this House effective. This is a very important step forward. I would like us as we continue – I think we should have this dialogue very seriously – on what other laws we want to pass in this House to make our role as representing the counties, serving and protecting their interests, meaningful. Madam Temporary Speaker, when you come to the other aspects of that article dealing with the debating on the monies going to the counties, these are pretty clear but the role of representation, oversight and protection of the counties and so on, we have not done very well. We had the Sen. Sang’ Bill which, unfortunately, was grossly misunderstood by governors.They thought that we were going to be around nosing into their affairs. Of course, oversight is a form of nosing, really. However, it is a nosing that increases transparency and accountability and you cannot keep yourself accountable all the time. You need other institutions and agencies to keep you accountable. Even in a family– God himself knew this – that man and woman are made complementary to each other as wife and husband. In that union, they account to each other and keep each other in check. Indeed when in the Christian religion people are getting married, the whole 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."
}