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{
    "id": 762682,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/762682/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 1177,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Dawood",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2572,
        "legal_name": "Abdul Rahim Dawood",
        "slug": "abdul-rahim-dawood"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. At the outset, I want to support this Bill. I want to put it on record that my friend and elder brother Senator for Meru was on one of the television stations talking about this Bill being untimely and we should have involved NASA. I believe that we, as the National Assembly, are here to make laws and we have not gagged anybody from coming here to make laws. We do not need invitation to come to Parliament to make laws. Hon. Cheptumo’s Committee has done a good job. Where they have said that the vice- chair or any commissioner can stand in for the chairperson, I think it is a good thing because man is fallible. He can today be okay; tomorrow he might not be okay. Something or the other might happen to the chairperson and then we would have an election which nobody can announce its results. So, I think that is a good amendment. When we talk about technology and identification of voters by technology, in the last elections on 8th of August, there were many people who could not be identified by their biometrics. Unfortunately, they could not vote at all. It was not a matter of them not having their fingerprints or fingers. They had everything. But because their biometrics did not identify them, they could not vote. Those were missed votes for me and for the President. I think this complementary system of identification of voters is very important. That is one thing which I think is good. For the quorum of the commission to become three, I think it is very important because there are times commissioners may be away on work and the commission has to operate. We are not saying that they will always be three. We are saying the minimum should be three. I think that is a good thing because the commission needs to work even in the absence of one or two commissioners, who may be indisposed or who may be out of the country. We cannot stop the commission because it cannot achieve quorum. We need to make sure that, if at any time, like what has happened today, the NASA principal has withdrawn, whether he will write to the IEBC or not, the Chairperson should have the authority to declare that if he does not participate in the election, whether he writes officially or not, and if it is only one person who is going to be in the race, then he should declare President Uhuru Kenyatta as validly elected so that we can go to Kasarani and install him and we 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."
}