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{
    "id": 578153,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/578153/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 90,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Baiya",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 8,
        "legal_name": "Peter Njoroge Baiya",
        "slug": "peter-baiya"
    },
    "content": "on the National Assembly and the Senate. It is not on the Executive. It is only the arrangement and procedure of developing legislation that requires the Executive to do the initial draft legislation and then pass it over to Parliament. I can confirm that the Executive has already developed those Bills and they have been brought to us. They were brought after 28th July which was last month. We are now only asking the National Assembly and the Senate to be given sufficient time to do the necessary processing of those Bills. Now, a question arises: If we do not extend this time, the consequences fall on the National Assembly and the Senate and not on the Executive. Members of Parliament will, therefore, be shooting themselves under the foot if, for whatever reasons, they failed to extend time to give themselves the opportunity to get time to consider those Bills. We have also seen situations in the past where Parliament rushed through the process of enacting legislation and ended up enacting legislation that had issues in terms of quality, clarity or even in quality or substance of the law. It is really imperative and in the interest of the country that we allow Parliament to have ample time to consider the various legislations, which will be done in the usual manner by the relevant Departmental Committees. I am very sure the consequences of us not extending time will squarely fall on Members of the National Assembly. Those consequences are quite dire. The Constitution gives Kenyans an opportunity to go to the High Court which can order the dissolution of this Parliament merely on the basis that we have failed to enact legislation to implement this Constitution. The country had a timeline of five years to enact various legislations. This being the fifth year, we are looking into all the Bills including, as has been pointed out under this application, any other legislation required to be, under the Constitution, enacted by Parliament within five years. So, we are also going to use the window of one year to look at any other legislation which we may have missed. We are already working with the relevant institutions to conduct audit of the implementation to ensure that there is no existing law or provision of the Constitution---"
}