Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 591465,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/591465/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 188,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": ", but a purely parliamentary driven document that is supposed to address some of the challenges that we need to overcome. Look at what the Senate was supposed to do – represent and protect interests of counties and their governments. Today, you are an alien in the county because the governor, his team and by extension the county assembly, think that the Senate is a foreign thing and yet this Constitution is written. Most of the people sitting in this Senate led by the former Attorney-General e meritus, Sen. Wako; Sen. Orengo, Sen Murungi, Sen. Wetangula and everybody here who was in the previous Parliament, worked on this document. However, because a document is supposed to evolve, nobody knew that it would be harmful to Kenyans and that it would derail and make oversight weak. Madam Temporary Speaker, the people that we were campaigning for in West Pokot County--- I had four MPs in my party and all of them plus the governor were queuing after me and I campaigned for all them. A number of them won. I had 20 county assembly candidates and they would all pledge allegiance before me every day for them to be voted in. A number of them were voted in and that is why the only Kenya National African Union (KANU) Government in Kenya is found in West Pokot County and not anywhere else. But today, their Senate has been reduced to almost an Any Other Business (AOB) because of some of the challenges this new Constitution has come up with. When we created the Constitution, we said we have commissions and the amount of money we set aside to commissions is over Kshs100 billion per year. You would expect that as a result of having these commissions in place, devolution was going to be tightened to work, but look at the challenges we have today, they are not working. By now, normally, if you want to arrest a bad situation or bad manner from affecting people or counties, you deal with culprits on the spot. This is now going to three years, no governor who has been cited for misbehaviour has been dealt with and even some of the Members of County Assemblies or the County Executive Committee Members (CECs), yet we were supposed to have put tight rules which protect the sanctity of this Constitution. The first recommendation that has been given by the Committee is the role of Parliament which has now been written that we need to strengthen Senate and the National Assembly, but they work together separately by having their own Parliamentary Service Commissions (PSC); Senate Commission that looks at the welfare of the Senators and another one looking at the welfare of the National Assembly so that these conflicts that normally arise do not come. You also read in the first page of The Star and The People newspapers, some of the challenges that are now coming up misuse of money. The Auditor-General has recorded that money has been lost in Parliament. So, you would not know which House of Parliament brought all those issues. Suppose we had different commissions, we would have been able to pinpoint which one brought this disrepute as indicated there. Madam Temporary Speaker, the Committee in their recommendation also talked about the legislative mandate of Parliament. We need full legislative mandate of the Senate and the National Assembly to provide passage of all Bills. We have had a very big challenge. I brought three Bills here; the first one was on the Kenya National Police Reservists (KPRs), and both Houses of Parliament passed it. But to date, the President has not assented it into law. These reservists are the ones that have now brought sense 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."
}