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{
    "id": 60536,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/60536/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 247,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir, for giving me an opportunity to say a few things in lauding the President’s Speech which was focused, timely and which set the mood for what this House is to do within this session. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the success of the legislative agenda that we are setting upon will entirely depend on how you, as our Speaker, will steer this process. There is always a tendency when you have such a heavy legislative agenda the House may be in a mood to just channel out Bills into law without carefully scrutinizing them. Some of these Bills are getting a very heavy input from sectoral interests which have very heavy vested interests that may not end up giving us the desired legal structures that we want to implement in the Constitution. You have been hearing, for example, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry of Local Government purporting to be trying to roll out legislative issues for the reform of the local government structures. Certainly, there will be vested interests. Some of them want to be preserved while others want to modernize themselves and look like they conform with the Constitution when we are in fact perpetuating what we are running away from. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I want to urge you and your office that in the process of looking at these Bills, you do what you have always done even before you became Speaker in the last Parliament; call out hon. Members for a retreat and let us have a band of five Bills that we can all go through very painstakingly. When we come on the Floor of the House quite often, the issues that we articulate in the Bills are not necessarily for the good of the framework of the law that we are trying to bring to the House. This will help Members of Parliament, some who have got better knowledge, training and professional founding than others to scan through these Bills and have an informal discussion that will enrich the Bills to bring them in sync with the spirit and letter of the Constitution. Otherwise, we might end up having institutions in the country heavily influencing the reform process, not because they are reform-minded, but because they want to perpetuate themselves and live as if there is no change. One very critical Bill that I would urge us to consider within this session is the Devolution Bill. Certainly, the President outlined very clearly on pages 11 and 12 the 10 Bills that are on their way here. One of them is the Devolution Bill that is so critical in taking care of issues of devolution. What are these counties? What are the county assemblies going to look like? What is the membership of the county assembly? What are the electoral units for the county assemblies? How are the county assemblies going to live side by side if at all, with the local authorities as currently established? How are we going to balance the electoral units of Parliament and county units? I think the relevant Departmental Committee together with the Commission for Implementation of the Constitution should urgently look at the devolution law that will guide us in implementing devolution. Unless we do that, we will find it very difficult as we go along to see whether we will maintain the local authorities as currently established. If we do, how do we reconcile them with the devolved units? How do you have a county council in Bungoma County that will run concurrently with the devolved assembly? How will we have a Nambale Town Council within the Busia County and what will they do against each other."
}