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{
    "id": 687200,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/687200/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 377,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Kaluma",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1565,
        "legal_name": "George Peter Opondo Kaluma",
        "slug": "george-peter-opondo-kaluma"
    },
    "content": "Let me also congratulate the team that went to negotiations when we were at war in our over democratisation process. It has been said, and it bears no repeating that at negotiations, you give as much as you take so that the position we have is not the position the ruling Coalition wholly wanted. The position we want is not the position that the CORD) preferred, but it is the best position for the country. Let me thank that team for putting the interest of the nation ahead. Before I go to something else let me congratulate and thank the leadership of the nation, that is, both the President and the leadership of the Opposition coalition for having found it fit to constitute the Joint Select Committee to put us where we belong. The electoral environment in the country, if we breathe life and law into this Report and ultimately pass the proposed Bills, will be radically changed. Our electoral processes have been reduced into a rigging competition. There is a joke about the regions in our country that compete over rigging. We are not sure whether the elections and their results are the expression of the true will of the electors. It is about the thinking that people are rigging around. The consequences are there for us to see. We know where we were in 2007/2008. We also know about the tension that followed the elections in 2013. We have started the journey of saying “no” to anything that will cause violence in this country over elections. We have started the journey of securing our future elections and making sure that they will be the true expression of the freewill of the electors. Let me say that there is a fundamental development being proposed here, which I request my colleagues to forthrightly and straightaway breathe law into. In the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee, we have been observing elections all around. The last election I observed was in Turkey. That was supported by CORD. Polling closes at 5.30 p.m. and by 6.30 p.m., the President is already known to everybody. The public portal is open to all candidates, parties and members of the public. The current President who visited our country a short while ago, Mr. Erdogan, left Istanbul and addressed the nation within one hour’s time in Ankara. Why? This is because the system of elections is electronic. We went to South Africa in the last elections. When there are contests around the results of the elections, it is not the commissioners who tell you the results in Western Cape Province. That is done by the Returning Officer who is there. So, what is being proposed by this team of great men and women before this House, before we even consider this party hopping, which is not the reason for us to have gone to the streets at all, is that there will be biometric voter registration. There will be mandatory electronic voter identification at polling stations. Those results will be transmitted from all polling stations in the country simultaneously to the County Returning Officer and to the national tallying centre. I want to dare say that I do not think we even need what we call the cleansing of the register or the fresh registration we have been thinking about because no dead voter will have a chance to resurrect to go and vote. No multiple voters in the register will have a chance to do it twice. You will be identified electronically. We are moving to a situation where anyone who will be elected as the President of this country will have the salutation of all Kenyans, both the winners and the losers, that he is really the President of the nation and he has our confidence to lead. That is a fundamental departure. I request that because Article 94 of the Constitution says that we are the people who breathe life into provisions to make them law, let us expedite this process and move it forward. If you look at the election laws that are being proposed here--- You are being told that the results that are 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."
}