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{
    "id": 648636,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/648636/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 362,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Kanyua",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 981,
        "legal_name": "Priscilla Nyokabi Kanyua",
        "slug": "priscilla-nyokabi-kanyua"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Deputy Speaker, having looked at the new criterion for funding political parties, the criterion proposed was very low when this matter first came to the Departmental Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs. The feeling of the Committee at the time was that even a party with presence in only one county, even if it does not bother to look for votes in any other county, would qualify for funding under the Political Parties Act. Looking at the criterion today, any party that is going to qualify for funding is going to be a national party in line with Article 89 of the Constitution. According to the new criteria, a party can only receive funding if it has 20 elected Members in the National Assembly. There is no single county that can produce 20 Members of the National Assembly. Our biggest county is Nairobi County, has 17 Members of Parliament. Even Nairobi County alone, which is cosmopolitan with a national outlook, will not raise 20 Members of Parliament even if a party is set up for it alone. Twenty Members of Parliament can only be from five, six, seven or nine counties. A party that has presence in nine counties is a party that needs to be supported by taxpayers’ funding so that it can grow and sell its ideology anywhere in the country. The second criterion is when a party has three elected Members of the Senate or three elected Governors. If a party can get three Governors and three Senators, it will have received more than 500,000 votes in terms of quantum of votes. It will be a party that has made effort and is not based in a county. Lastly, if a party has 40 MCAs, it will also qualify for funding, as per the mediated version of the Political Parties (Amendment) Bill. Looking at the criterion in the mediated version of the Bill, it appears that the country will benefit in the sense that more parties will receive funding. We need more parties to receive taxpayers’ funding, noting that this is a multiparty democracy. If we are going to strengthen our parties, they must receive funding from taxpayer. A lot of the mediation process has gone into cleaning up the earlier Bill. In seconding, I would also urge Members of the National Assembly to accept the mediated version of the Political Parties (Amendments) Bill (Senate Bill No.3 of 2014). Political parties need funding to prepare for the general elections that will be taking place in 2017."
}