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{
    "id": 757644,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/757644/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 198,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Samuel Onunga Atandi",
    "speaker_title": "The Member for Alego Usonga",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13290,
        "legal_name": "Samuel Onunga Atandi",
        "slug": "samuel-onunga-atandi"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity. This is my first time to speak in this House. Before I joined politics, I was a leading professional in the financial services sector. When I told my colleagues that I was resigning to vie for a parliamentary seat, most of my colleagues disagreed with me. They told me that Parliament was a discredited organisation that a serious professional like myself was not suitable to join. I disagreed with all of them and went ahead to campaign. That is the reason I am here today. Firstly, let me take this opportunity to thank the great people of Alego Usonga for voting for me overwhelmingly as their Member of Parliament. One of the reasons my former colleagues gave while disapproving my decision to join politics was the fact that this House was notorious for only finding consensus on items that were sectarian and on items that served personal interests. Therefore, when this Motion was brought to this House this afternoon, for us to discuss the IEBC issues presently being canvassed nationally, I began to reflect on my former colleagues’ views regarding my decision to join politics. The truth of the matter is that the 8th August general elections were scandalous and discredited. We know the judgement that the Supreme Court gave on the presidential election. We are aware that the number of petitions that have been filed in court challenging the election of my colleagues in this House as well as in county assemblies is enormous. Therefore, for Members of this House to fail to recognise the fact that the 8th August general elections were scandalous and refuse to look at issues squarely is, in my view, being dishonest. We must be a nation that values accountability and responsibility. If we are saying that the IEBC conducted elections that turned out to be scandalous even after being allocated Kshs42 billion for that purpose, where is the accountability? My view is that somebody must be accountable and responsibility for the bungled general elections. The NASA Coalition is quite in order for saying that they are not ready to participate in the repeat presidential election to be conducted by the same institution that has refused to be accountable and take responsibility for the bungled elections that were held on 8th August 2017.Therefore, I plead with my colleagues that, in the interest of this country, the question of reforming the IEBC to have the individuals in- charge of the electoral processes taking responsibility before we go to the repeat presidential election is not something we should be debating. As NASA, we are not ready to participate in a 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."
}