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{
    "id": 759982,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/759982/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 73,
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    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Again, I have a great opportunity to come before the House with a very important Bill that has been passed by the National Assembly. This Bill which has already been committed to the ad hoc Committee by this House earlier on mirrors a Bill that was brought to this House by Sen. Dullo. The Bill went through public participation and we gave our views. It looks like pursuant to the work that was done by the Joint Select Committee of this House and the National Assembly, there is an accommodation of the issues that were raised by members of the public. In the House, we will have the opportunity to look at this when the ad hoc Committee will come back with its recommendations before we go to the Committee Stage. This Bill is very important. The first part of the Bill talks about the place of the Chairperson of the IEBC and what happens when there is a vacancy in that office. A law is made for men and not men made for law. Some people are asking this question: Why at this point in time are we discussing the Chairperson of the IEBC and the critical importance of commissioners of the IEBC? This is because of the experience we now have. For the first time, dealing with a nullified election and working on a fresh election has shown to all of us that every manager of the election is a very important person. It is a critical position. They play a very important role. That is why we cannot leave this to conjecture; to any possibility of a chairperson of a very important commission who is supposed to deal with fresh elections. In that fresh election, if we do not get that 50 per cent plus one vote, we will have another repeat election, that is, a rerun? If the rerun is not good, will we have another fresh election? We could as well theoretically be in an election for the next two years. Some of those people who are telling us that the law has been made and the election is “on the next day”. How are you sure that we will not have election the next day and the election will not get 50 per cent plus one vote? Therefore, you have a rerun and the rerun never meets the set thresholds and we will have a fresh election. It is possible for us theoretically to have elections even up to the end of next year. Therefore, to come to the conclusion that we made this law just for the 26th October, 2017, election, is actually a serious and fatal lie. It would as well be that after the 26th of October, 2017, election, we come back to this Chamber and find that there are certain laws that we must accommodate so that the elections can be better, free, fair, simple and verifiable. Mr. Speaker, Sir, there is already a litigant in court challenging technology itself. He argues that the actual use of technology for an election is unconstitutional. What will happen tomorrow if that person comes back here and the court declares that the use of technology is unconstitutional? That is not a new thing. In Germany, for example, Dr. Wisner, a PhD holder in Physics and his father, Dr. Wisner Senior who is also a holder of PhD in Political Science, went to court after the 2005 Elections. They said that using technology in transmitting results and voting technologically was not possible for the voter to be able to monitor every step of the election to its final conclusion. This case went all the way and in 2009, the Supreme Court of Germany made a very important decision. This happened in a country called Germany with 99 per cent literacy levels and one of the top five countries in the world economically. The court said that they must discard the use of technology and use manual"
}