Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 566533,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/566533/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 257,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Kaluma",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1565,
        "legal_name": "George Peter Opondo Kaluma",
        "slug": "george-peter-opondo-kaluma"
    },
    "content": "I thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. Kenya is a multi-party democracy and the people of Kenya have made that deliberate choice. There is a good reason as to why we decided that parties be funded using taxpayer’s money; they must meet particular criteria and parameters. We had a situation in this country where parties were being formed and run using a briefcase; you only heard of them during election time. Then we said we would be committing the funds of this country only to supporting political parties which contribute to the democratization of this country. That is why thresholds were set in the manner that they were set. In as much as I always find difficulties opposing Dr. Chris Wamalwa, a very scholarly Member of Parliament, I am constrained to support this particular Bill. My view is that we must agree that parties must build; they must be of some meaningful contribution and must have some membership, both in Parliament and of other people who vote leaders into positions in the party to be funded. That is why I was saying that if we have a situation in which we have a party that is below the limits, we should not cure that by opening the floodgate and allowing all parties to come in. Instead, let us allow formation of coalitions. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, we observed the elections in South Africa the other day as Members of the Departmental Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs Committee. I can confirm to the House that the parties that would participate meaningfully in that electoral process were known even before we went there. I, thereafter, observed the electoral process in Turkey in the recent presidential election. It was a race between two clear political parties with ideologies which, of course, the citizens of that country know. Of course the AK Party won the presidential election. You saw what happened in terms of parliamentary elections. The other coalition of the smaller parties came together and they won the majority in Parliament. There is coalition formation going on. In the United Kingdom, from where we borrow so much, they have two major political parties which compete, the Labour Party and the Conservative. We cannot have a situation where our political philosophy, as a country, is running over 100 political parties and seek to sustain them using taxpayers’ money. I would request that we oppose this Bill, and if we do not succeed to defeat it, we come up with some very radical amendments, so that we do not have these small parties. The provision that we needed to have is a situation where if you are in the CORD Coalition for instance, and ODM is getting funding, there are some things you must lose because you have agreed to be in a coalition with other parties. Instead of saying that all political parties which have one or two Members of Parliament get money, the party receiving political party funding in the coalition should share that money with those other political parties. That is an 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."
}