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"content": "When committees retreat to attend to a memorandum, the natural flow, consequence and end is for the committees to bring a report and lay it on the Table. This is what is envisaged in our Standing Order No.158(5). The distinguished senior counsel, Senator for Siaya, did not read it in full. Please, allow me to read it. “Where the Joint Committee fails to submit a report and under paragraph (2), or the report of the Joint Committee is to the effect that the Committee has failed to agree to the President’s reservations or where the Joint Committee fails to agree on a version of proposed amendments to the President’s reservations, the President’s reservations shall be taken to have been approved by Parliament upon the laying of the report on the Table of the Senate under paragraph (2).” Mr. Chairman, Sir, no report has been laid on the Table of the Senate. Even if there was a disagreement, the exit strategy designed under Standing Order No.158(5) is not available. Mr. Chairman, Sir, I associate myself wholly with the eloquent arguments by Sen. Orengo about Article 115 of the Constitution. I submit to you and the House that, in fact, the memorandum before us is incompetent to the extent that the language usage alone is not in conformity with the language of the Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution is there any use of the word “recommendation.” The Constitution only talks of “reservation.” Reservation is not recommendation, neither is recommendation reservation. The two are distinctly different. The use of any word in the Constitution is not casual, accidental or a mistake. The drafters of the Constitution normally pick the words they use very carefully so that when you say “standing,” you cannot be sitting. Mr. Chairman, Sir, apart from the use of the word “recommendation” which is not available to the President to recommend anything because he can only express reservation, the Memorandum even goes further and introduces new clauses. It is not available to the President, once a Bill has been taken to him to assent, to recreate legislation. Under this Constitution, he cannot bring a new clause. A new clause means a completely separate part of a Bill that, when it comes to the House, must be subjected to all the necessary steps of legislation of First Reading, Second Reading, Committee Stage and Third Reading on the new clause because it is a new recommendation. I am very happy that I am submitting to you because you are my senior in law and you have a very distinguished career in understanding, appreciating and prosecuting the law. When you read through this Constitution, there is no provision for the President to bring Bills to the House. He cannot sit in the State House, draft a Bill, sign and bring it to the House. That provision is not available. What is available is different and it is what we have been doing. If my distinguished colleague, Sen. Leshore, listened without interjecting, he would benefit immensely from what we are saying. Mr. Chairman, Sir, I submit to you, therefore, that although we are on Order No.8, Order Nos.8 and 9 have come like hand and cloth because they are the same Memoranda from the President. They carry the same degrees of culpability and incompetence in law, under the Constitution and within our own Standing Orders. Mr. Chairman, Sir, I urge you not to give us any casual ruling to retreat---"
}