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"content": "“A county executive committee shall manage and coordinate the functions of the county administration and the departments”. So, when you talk about that coordinating role, it is a coordinating role assigned under our Constitution to the executive committee as an executive committee. If you take into account that these are functions of the executive committee and in the executive committee, the membership includes the governor and so on, and you are now giving that function to a deputy governor? What will the governor do? In other words, you are giving the deputy governor the role which he is not supposed to have under the Constitution. There will now be virtually two centres of power; the governor and the deputy governor as far as the executive committee is concerned. It is dangerous to create those two centres of power. We are told that these amendments must be brought because most of the governors are uncivilized. They have abused their powers. There are many examples of that but taking into account - as I said earlier - this whole thing should be done through a political process. Things develop slowly and we shall come to where we are supposed to be. If you are going to amend the Act just because the county governors are, in the view of some, stupid people; that will not apply after the elections because after the elections, a number of our own Members of the Senate whom I know are civilized, educated and experienced will not abuse those powers. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, why amend the section now because of the existing governors who are uncivilized when we believe that in the next election, we are going to have civilized governors including my Vice Chair, former Cabinet Ministers, former Assistant Ministers of Foreign Affairs and diplomats? If those are going to be governors, then we are going to have civilized governors and they are going to use this law properly. There is no need to amend the law just because of uncivilized people. So, to accept these amendments in the form in which they are is not only ultra vires to the Constitution, but it is also usurping the powers of the governor. It is creating two centres of power, usurping the powers of the governor and it is not solving the problem. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I was telling my learned friend, Sen. Murkomen, for whom I have very high regard as a person of interest, that what he was proposing can simply be achieved if the section which says that the governor under the County Governments Act may assign responsibilities and portfolio to the deputy governor. Because the word “may” was used, the governors felt that they can ignore assigning responsibilities and portfolios to deputy governors. So, if we changed the word “may” to “shall”, then it will be incumbent on all the governors to assign responsibilities to their deputies. Among the responsibilities he may assign – for example, he may say the deputy governor may take charge of the infrastructure and the economic policies of the county, and therefore, he wants him to chair the sub-committee or he may say, in fact, like it has happened in my county, you do the job. Now that I have mentioned my county, it is true that there have been many quarrels between governors and deputy governors. It appears that as we near the general election, there are conciliations between the governors and the deputy governors. For example, in my own county, the governor has not seen eye to eye with the deputy The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes"
}