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{
    "id": 650920,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/650920/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 214,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "April 27, 2016 SENATE DEBATES 27 The Senate Minority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": " Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I withdraw, but my interactions with him always appear to be far from reasonable. However, I will avoid that. A hyena told a stone: “Hata usiponijibu, umenisikia.” This report on this Bill is very important for two or three reasons. One is that it brings to the fore the important point that every vote counts. As it is today, we have created monoliths, so to speak, in accessing national revenue that goes to parties. A party that cannot get the threshold set out here has no business laying any claim to state resources. Parties must strive to grow, be national and where they do not meet the threshold, be obligated to join coalitions that give a national character that also gives the threshold. We have so many parties in this country. At the last count, I think they were about 65. We thought that with the new Constitution and the creation of the requirement that no party shall be sectarian or regional, it appears to me that the law is not strictly followed. We know parties that are based in one county and yet they are registered and they are operating. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, before I come to the actual provisions of the Act, in future, it will be good to empower the Registrar of Political Parties to automatically deregister parties that do not win any seat at the elections. Parties should not be tools of trade as we see some of the owners of those parties doing. At elections time, they become very busy. In fact, some of them normally shift operations from unknown offices to the gates of Parliament to offer tickets to Members who may be having difficulties in the parties that they have served on. It is prudent that the law be re-tooled, so to speak, to bring to the country a situation where at the end of an election, for example, a party that fields candidates everywhere in an election and does not win any seat, has no business remaining in the books of the Registrar of Political Parties. They should automatically come to sunset. There is a group called Political Parties Liaison Committee. The noisiest, most arrogant and irritating parties are those that do not even have representation anywhere. You remember there was a fist fight in Mombasa County at a Political Liaisons Committee meeting. The fist fight was caused by parties that do not even have representation in county assemblies. Their representatives were asserting themselves by saying:- “I am the president of my party. I am the party leader of my party, and so on”. We need those thresholds to clean up the mess and bring sanity in the body politic of the country. Equally important is that parties that cannot win a seat even across the county where they are based also have serious questions as to the constitutionality because the Constitution is very clear on this. The threshold of reducing from 5 to 3 per cent is reasonable. This should attract more support for more parties. When public resources are available, it is also important to spread them. Some parties fail to perform because they do not have resources. So, if a party has struggled on its own and met the basic minimum like the three per cent of the national vote, then they should get funding. Equally important is the tabulation in Clause 2(b) that a party must have at least 20 elected Members of the National Assembly and three elected Members of the Senate, The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate"
}