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{
    "id": 718755,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/718755/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 116,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Kajuju",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 840,
        "legal_name": "Florence Kajuju",
        "slug": "florence-kajuju"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, as a nation, we cannot agree to be parties to an illegality. Passing this amendment is accepting an illegality. We cannot reduce the consensual age of a child from 18 to 16 years. A16-year-old girl is still a child. We have sought to protect our children when it comes to exposing them to sexual matters. The legal age is 18 years. It is, therefore, illegal to even imagine that we can reduce that age from 18 to 16 years. This particular amendment also goes further to seek to protect dangerous offenders. Paragraph (g) states that a person cannot be declared a dangerous offender unless and until they exhaust the appeal process. The moment someone has been convicted of a sexual offence, especially if it is defilement, that person has to be taken to be a dangerous offender. At the end of the day, if they proceed on appeal and the appeal succeeds, then the court and any other person would get to understand if that person is dangerous or not. However, it cannot be said that offenders are given such a leeway that unless they exhaust the appeal process, they cannot be declared dangerous offenders. The moment someone has defiled a child, he is a dangerous sexual offender. Defilement is different from rape. Rape is when you rape someone who is over 18 years while defilement is when you defile a minor. Therefore, before someone is arrested for defilement, they would have defiled several children. Most of them are repeat offenders. By the time they are arrested, they would have committed the offence several times. It was in the newspapers the other day that someone had committed defilement with three children before he was arrested. I am praying that this matter be committed to the Departmental Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs so that it can make a report. I believe that the Committee cannot make a mistake to approve this kind of an amendment. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I also support the Judicial Service Act amendment as proposed. In the Judiciary, there is the ranking order where we have the Chief Justice (CJ) the Deputy Chief Justice (DCJ) and the senior most judges. However, the Judicial Service Act, as it is today, has no delegation of duty when there is no CJ or DCJ. It is, therefore, important when the Act is amended, to provide for delegation of duty to seek the senior most judge in the unlikely event that the CJ and the DCJ are not present. That is a good amendment because it allows the courts to proceed with the business in case the two heads of the institution are not present. I also have reservations on the proposed amendments to the National Police Service Act and I beg that the Departmental Committee on Administration and National Security looks at this proposed amendment. It is not enough to say that the Act proposes to amend the status of Deputy Inspector General for the Director of Criminal Investigation (DCI) in the event of any fall out, retirement or someone opting out. When they are employing, the Constitution requires equality in so far as gender is concerned. So, if the Inspector General is a man, the Deputy Inspector General under the law should be a lady. Therefore, it is not just status but gender. I propose that the issue of gender ought to be reflected in that proposed amendment so that we know that quality in terms of ranking is observed, so that not only the Constitution is implemented but any other laws that relate to the 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."
}