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{
    "id": 701824,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/701824/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 138,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Chepkong’a",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1154,
        "legal_name": "Samuel Kiprono Chepkonga",
        "slug": "samuel-kiprono-chepkonga"
    },
    "content": "we must work together. We cannot force people to do things which they think are not cultural to them. The Constitution recognises the cultures of every ethnic group in this country. There were serious misgivings in the various options we considered. We came to the conclusion that if we pass the progressive implementation of this constitutional requirement, we will be able to achieve it in less than 10 years. The objective of this Bill is, therefore, to propose an amendment to Article 81, as I have already stated, to insert “progressive realisation of two-thirds gender rule”. As a consequence of that, the Committee developed a number of proposals for legislations. We are seeking to strengthen the institutional framework for monitoring the implementation of equality policies, so that, at least, the two-thirds gender rule can be achieved much more quickly. Under the amendments that we are proposing, we are also seeking to emphasise that on election of women, they must be supported in terms of civic education, facilitation, capacity building and participation in political party affairs. Those are the innovative issues we are putting in place. The other thing we are proposing is to build on gains so far realised and incrementally achieve the two-thirds principle. The other thing we are seeking to do is to provide for sanctions to political parties who fail to meet certain thresholds in their offices, particularly, the National Executive Councils (NECs) of various political parties. We need to see, at least, two-thirds gender representation in the next NECs of various political parties. The other thing is to empower the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and the Registrar of Political Parties (RPP) to gazette the necessary mechanisms and procedures from time to time by way of subsidiary legislation that will achieve the two-thirds gender rule. This is not a fairly long amendment, but a fairly straightforward amendment. The Supreme Court anticipated this in its ruling, that we were going to propose progressive implementation as clearly stated in the Supreme Court opinion. So, anybody who is saying that we are doing something that is against the advisory opinion needs to read that advisory opinion. We have just picked the words from the Supreme Court advisory opinion. We have just proposed to amend Article 81(b) to read “progressive implementation” of this particular constitutional requirement. With those remarks, I move. I request the Leader of the Majority Party to second."
}