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{
    "id": 735942,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/735942/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 332,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "April 6, 2017 SENATE DEBATES 37 Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr.",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "It is now obvious that the role of the Members that you appointed, including myself, to sit in that Mediation Committee has now become untenable. We are staring at both a violation of the Constitution and impunity. When I sometimes sit in committees like this one, Mediation Committee, I sometimes hope that I am not dreaming. The excuses given by our colleagues in National Assembly is that there was expediency at the national level where they needed to appropriate money, thus there was need to pass that Bill quickly. They do that on the assumption, the words used is, assumption that the Senate will agree with the National Assembly. We are staring at a situation where we are going to be or are irrelevant. This is a crisis. What they have done and we cannot approve is a situation where they have now given an excuse under Article 223, that the Appropriation Act can be amended after all. This may look very academic but to allow this precedent, and I say precedent, because it is not an excuse that we are having an election in August. Everybody was aware that we are going to have an election. It is a wrong precedent to the extent that the National Assembly is going to side step its own Bill irrespective of our exercise of mandate under Article 96 to pass an Appropriation Act before the Division of Revenue Bill is passed by both Houses. I am surprised that the Senate Majority Leader can even suggest that he is going to call a Special Sitting to discuss the report of the Mediation Committee. He is not aware that the Mediation Committee that they have proposed, that includes the Senate Majority and Minority leaders, is so severely handicapped. At least on my part, I do not know why I should sit on that Committee listening to a lecture from hon. Mutava Musyimi and the rest of the Members. We are back to 2013 but it is even worse. What they want to do tomorrow, which I must tell you and disclose is that the National Assembly Committee has agreed that they would go through the process of amending of the Appropriation Act. They have mobilized and they are going to come tomorrow and propose that in the Committee and vote. Meanwhile, the Members of this Committee are supposed to sit and wait for them to vote. I want to disclose that I will not attend that meeting. This is because I will not sit in a meeting where people are violating the Constitution with impunity. What surprises me most about this process is that the leadership is Jubilee, the leadership of that Committee is Jubilee and the others are Members of Jubilee yet they do not agree and they do not talk. We should seek authority from this House that sent us to that Committee. It should allow us to precipitate a national crisis by not sitting to allow and acquiesce to the violation of the Constitution and the process of the division of revenue. Once we do so, then they will understand that they cannot use us as a rubberstamp for their own decisions. There is no expediency in the national Government that does not exist in the counties. I have made my disclosure. I will not sit in that Committee to allow this impunity by Members of the National Assembly at the behest of the Executive."
}