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{
    "id": 624258,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/624258/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 285,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Dr.) Oginga",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 194,
        "legal_name": "Oburu Ngona Odinga",
        "slug": "oburu-odinga"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity. I rise to oppose this Report because of history. The struggle to create a devolved system of government was a very long one. There were people in the system who opposed the creation of the devolved systems of government. This so-called Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee was created in the dying hours of the last Parliament. There were no parliamentarians in the House. They were busy in their constituencies. It is the Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee which tried to reverse some of the fundamental issues on devolution which were in the Constitution. They even tried to re-introduce the Provincial Administration through the back door. We cannot hand over the very important work for which the TA was created by the Constitution of this country. Parliament must find a way of ensuring that the systems which created the Ministry of Devolution and Planning, which almost became some kind of demi-god to suppress the work of the TA, are reversed. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, they made sure that the Transition Authority was not working. They were trying to take over some of the functions of TA. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I sit in the Departmental Committee on Finance, Planning and Trade, which is supposed to give money to TA to function. We were given a lot of hard work trying to give them money to function. Some of the pending functions were not because of inefficiency, but because some people are opposed to devolution. They are the ones who deliberately dumped functions which were supposed to be transferred gradually to the counties because they do not have the capacity. Capacity was supposed to be built by the TA. The TA would not build that capacity because they were not given capacity to do it. They were incapacitated to perform those functions. It is because of that, that the TA has not fulfilled the functions they were supposed to fulfill. We now have a change in the Ministry of Devolution and Planning. I hope my friend, Hon. Kiunjuri, will do a better job than what was previously done to incapacitate TA. He should make sure that the extension we will give to that Authority will be effectively used within the shortest time possible, so that they can wind up, particularly the function of transferring assets to those authorities. This is something which cannot be done by the Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee because is biased because it is an arm of the system. It cannot arbiter between the central Government and the county governments because it is biased. The law is more or less the central Government law and it has nothing much to do with the Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee, if you read it carefully. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I do not want to go further than that, but I would also like to mention about the legal opinion of the Kenya Law Reform Commission, the Office that the Leader of the Majority Party in the National Assembly is condemning. That legal opinion must be taken very seriously. I even tend to agree with him on the arguments he created and the legal arguments which Hon. Neto was creating. This is a political issue as much as it is a legal issue. We must look at the two aspects. I hope this Parliament, in its wisdom, will consider all the facts surrounding TA, and give it a bit of time to conclude some of the important functions that they have started."
}