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{
    "id": 675141,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/675141/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 42,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Cheboi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 329,
        "legal_name": "Moses Kipkemboi Cheboi",
        "slug": "moses-cheboi"
    },
    "content": "In this particular case, I was privileged to be an acting Chair of the Committee because ordinarily, it is the Speaker of the National Assembly who is the Chair. There are rafts of recommendations that we made. Hon. Members can access them by going through the Report that we will have laid. Of importance is Standing Order No.111 which was the gist of what we were discussing as a Committee on Privileges where, when a Member is asked by the Speaker to leave the precincts of the Parliament and he refuses to do that and the Serjeant-at-Arms are involved, they lose the remainder of the Session. We had been asked to look at it with a view of trying to make a reasonable change in that particular Standing Order. Indeed, we have made a recommendation. This recommendation is to enhance punishment in case such an act is committed within the Chamber. The reasoning is basic. As we enhance it, we are also removing the punishment of the constituents who most probably will not--- I say most probably because sometimes the members of a constituency might have consulted with their own Member of Parliament and asked him to do a particular thing here. In most cases, the members of particular constituencies will not have been involved at all. Rather than punish the constituency, it will be better to mete out a punishment on the Member himself. That will help the membership to be a little more disciplined and, indeed, Members have been fairly disciplined. We have recommended that punishments be enhanced and it will be taken to the Rules Committee of this House to specifically mete out specific punishments. In most cases, we were recommending graduated punishments or punishments in terms of fines like it happens in Germany. As we did this, we also tried to look at many other jurisdictions. We realized that in other jurisdictions like Germany, fines are involved and, therefore, it deters Members. We looked at Wandayi’s specific case and I want to state this very briefly. That the reason this came to the Committee and to the Speaker was because three Members of this House, two of them extremely senior, made a request that the case of Hon. Wandayi be reviewed. The first, the one whom I also consider very senior, is the Hon. Leader of the Majority Party, Hon. Duale, who rose in this House and asked the Speaker to issue a ruling on it. Secondly, is the Deputy Leader of the Minority Party, whom I also consider a fairly senior Member of this House and Hon. Jakoyo Midiwo, who wrote a letter about three weeks after the act. Let us put it three weeks because it was on 19th July and there was also another Member. There was also one other Member for Homa Bay. He wrote a letter to the Speaker on the basis of that. I did not say that Hon. Kaluma is a junior Member. I specifically indicated that the first two were fairly senior Members of this House. When that came, the Speaker asked that the Committee on Privileges sits and discusses this. That is why we have this Report. 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."
}