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{
"id": 682129,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/682129/?format=api",
"text_counter": 323,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Hon. (Eng.) Gumbo",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 24,
"legal_name": "Nicholas Gumbo",
"slug": "nicholas-gumbo"
},
"content": "Aghostinho Neto, was because the CS has been reluctant to give effect to the instruments that will operationalise that Bill. Yet again, you are putting a CS, a person who is not elected by anybody, an appointee of the President nevertheless, to be the one to decide the parts of the Act to put in the Gazette. That is a dangerous provision. If you look at Clause 10, you are saying that you criminalise failure by private entities to prevent bribery. What if that failure is inadvertent? What if that failure is not intentional? Such provisions tend to portray utopic ambitions which are not applicable in real life. Clause 12 provides for the publication of guidelines and procedures again by the CS. How then do we delink subjectivity and discretion from the actions of the CS? If you give the CS all these powers for publication, guidance and procedures, are we not unwittingly making the CS to be participant in writing of this law? Part IV of this Bill contains provisions on offences. Clause 14 places an obligation on every person to report to the EACC any incident of bribery they witness or become aware of. It creates the offence of failure to do so. Again, can you force someone to be a witness if they do not want to be one? Clause 15 of this Bill deals with extraterritorial applications. This, in my view, is a very interesting provision. I happened to have gone to the Netherlands one day and everyone knows that the consumption of marijuana is allowed there. What if this this provision is not an offence in that territory? There are some countries which allow consumption of marijuana. There are some states in the USA that allow it. How will we deal with you if you commit that offence? I am also aware that in some countries, what you call a bribe is called commission. In fact, if you go, for example, to a city like Washington DC, you have all these people who you call lobbyists. They will help you get a job. Once you get it, you put up a mark-up. The only difference is that they pay a tax on that mark-up. In Kenya, that does not apply and would that be considered bribery? When you look at Clause 22, again, the CS makes regulations in consultation with the EACC for better carrying out of the provisions of this Act. Again, are we suggesting that the CS would himself be incorruptible? Are we suggesting that the CS would himself be immune to bribery? It is the same lacuna that we find ourselves in. Remember when we did the Public Audit Act, we asked ourselves how the CS for National Treasury, who is a major auditee, can be the one making regulation to govern the Public Audit Act. Is this not a contradiction that the CS in charge is incorruptible? On the statement on delegated legislative powers, we delegate legislative powers to the CS. We also talk of the Bill not concerning county governments. How can that be? How can this Bill not concern county governments? We know that if there is anything which has been effectively devolved in Kenya, it is the pervasive, shameless, heartless corruption in the counties where some governors, who were virtually on the verge of bankruptcy, now live like mini- presidents in the counties from money taken from the people of Kenya. I want to conclude by saying this and I have said it before, that I believe that if Kenyans were to embrace merely the provisions of the preamble of our Constitution, this country will not need all these many laws we keep making all the time. The preamble talks about acknowledging the supremacy of God the Almighty, honouring the heroes who fought for our Independence, proud of our ethnic diversity - that does not mean that you disregard somebody from another community - and respectful of our environment. How often do we destroy the environment? By merely embracing the preamble of our Constitution, we will not need the plethora of Bills which go merely to show that, as a country, we have serious perversity of nobility among us."
}