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{
    "id": 674868,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/674868/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 214,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Gikaria",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2489,
        "legal_name": "David Gikaria",
        "slug": "david-gikaria"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity. I thank you for the afternoon session. The Bill has a Bill status form from the Senate. It was first read in the Senate on 11th December 2014. It is coming to the National Assembly almost two or three years down the line. It is a very important Bill. This is one of the Bills that the Senate ought to have considered right from the start so that it could have been here early. In fact, many happenings in the counties are as a result of the fact that we did not have any legislation that was going to help us to assist in having proper deliberations in the county assemblies. The MCAs of my county assembly have fought more than 16 times. The speaker is also not in control. She does a lot of things without following the due process. If this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament, it is going to assist us so much to bring sanity in our assemblies. In my county assembly of Nakuru, MCAs have changed committees so many times. That happens every time an MCA is not in agreement with the speaker. Where I am a chairman of a committee, I am removed from the membership of that committee and placed elsewhere. That automatically means that I am no longer the chairman of that committee. It is so sad. This is done out of one of the sections that I have said where you are induced to do something or vote in a certain way so that you can retain your position, which is unacceptable. Once this Bill becomes law, that is going to change. I am a member of the Committee on Implementation of the Constitution (CIOC). The Senate has 12 Bills with a constitutional deadline. These Bills are supposed to be passed by 27th August 2016. The Senate is just sitting and not doing anything yet they want to do unnecessary business that is not under their mandate. It is unfortunate that the Senate is going on recess next week and will come back after six weeks yet there are 12 constitutional Bills before them. You can imagine the aftermath of not passing those constitutional Bills. We passed those Bills more than a year ago and after pushing the deadline to one year, after two months, all those Bills left the National Assembly to the Senate. They have not yet been debated. I think Senators are concentrating on how they can be governors. They have seen that governors are stealing a lot of money and they now want to be like them. I will be very brief regarding this Bill. I want to start with defamation against the county assemblies. It is important to do publication with factual material. It also states that when you make a defamatory publication, you are fined Kshs500,000 or two years in prison and yet our Constitution allows for freedom of the Press. We need to look at that particular issue when it comes to Third Reading where we will propose amendments to try and stop that. The ills that are affecting our county assemblies is because nothing is reported. Misappropriation and misuse of public funds is never reported and they are always hiding behind the reason that they are giving us false information. This is not acceptable. We should allow the Press at the county level to relay live proceedings. In Nakuru County, there is a Public Gallery which is outside the assembly and when they do not want anyone to follow the proceedings, they just switch off the television, and you are not allowed to The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}