Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 690463,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/690463/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 51,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Dr.) Simiyu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 141,
        "legal_name": "David Eseli Simiyu",
        "slug": "david-eseli"
    },
    "content": "wide experience like India, which has over 800 million voters, is able to deliver an election in a record time, and would be willing to assist. Many other countries would be willing to assist us in this endeavour for electoral reforms and ensure that our elections are better handled than before. If you look at this Bill, you will realise that we have also put in something for future elections. I would call on the Committee in charge of security to look at this Bill properly. We are talking about voter registration to the extent that people must walk to some place and register themselves as voters. That is duplication because once you get an ID, you should be a voter. The only thing you will need to do is to go and verify the polling station you want to vote at. That should be the way we should be going. We expect the Departmental Committee on Administration and National Security to take this seriously. There has been a move to try and put all these things together in one card. That is the future that we should be looking at. This Bill has made provision for that aspect so that in future, the National Bureau of Registration and the IEBC can be working in collaboration with each other. In fact, in some countries, the electoral body is the keeper of the register of persons because once you clock 18 years, you are eligible to vote. All you need to do is verify the station you would like to vote at. On the issue of party hopping, we should realise that even the Constitution itself says that independent candidates must not have belonged to a political party for, at least, three months before the election. What we have done is nothing new. Another thing that people need to realise is that Article 138 of the Constitution is very clear that when there is more than one candidate for presidential elections, a presidential election shall be held in every constituency. The Constitution is saying that the election of the President must happen in every constituency. Therefore, the Returning Officer and the presiding officers in the constituency become very important. That is why we have provided that the results should be transmitted directly from the polling station to the constituency tallying centre and from the constituency tallying centre to the national tallying centre. The results of the presidential elections will not be transmitted to the County Returning Officer. That is one thing that people need to get very clearly. You could say in simple terms that you are having 290 elections in 290 constituencies. That is to put it simply. That is what people need to realise. Finally, what we were trying to do is to keep the spirit of our Constitution, which anticipates free, fair and secure elections. Kriegler himself recommended that we look at the electronic voting for that to happen. We are not yet at the actual electronic voting. We can only use parts of electronics in our voting process while we still have a few areas that are manual like, the voting and the counting. I would urge the Jubilee administration, which prides itself as a digital administration that this is one area they should look at. As they claim to be digital, they need to put things in place to ensure that elections in this country are provided with enough funding. This will make sure that we head towards digital age in elections rather than allowing a lot of manual events which are amenable to manipulation by not just clever people who can also manipulate electronics but by anybody else. I wish to tell my colleagues that this Bill is very critical to us as a country because it will determine how our elections will be conducted. It will also determine our standing in the community of nations. Thank you."
}