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{
    "id": 772618,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/772618/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 53,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "of the Judiciary, largely Parliament was doing a good job. There is a great initiative that was started and chaired by Sen. Murkomen and Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr. about how we can redesign this Senate. Truth be told; whether we call the other House ‘the Lower House,’ it is largely the Senate which does not have substantial authority in the architecture of the Constitution. If we approach the issues, flaws and things that we can correct in our own Constitution in a bipartisan manner, then we can make the Senate the House that it should be. In the last Parliament, my friend, Sen. Haji, and I were on a trip to Russia, the Philippines and France. The Senate is a House of men and women that guide the nation, and that is why we are fewer. In the United States (US) there are lesser Senators than there are people in the House of Representatives because there is a moment in the nation that we should sit together. Whether the Executive goes a different direction from the Judiciary, we should be able to sit together in a bipartisan way. When we are out there, what we talk sometimes is not reflective of this institution. Secondly, just to ride on what my leader, Sen. Wetangula, was saying I had an experience when I was boarding a British Airways plane. I had sat on my seat and was going to a conference in the United Kingdom. I was taken out of the plane and my passport taken away. I did not have a passport for two years. However, I want to thank the Moi regime that he finally came to live with the fact that it was wrong to have taken that passport, he sent a permanent secretary in his office; he did not even call me to his office. At that time I had a legal office at Agip House. He came and said: “I am returning to you this passport because it is the only thing that you can show out there that, indeed, you are a proud Kenyan.” During those days the passport was written: “This passport is the property of the Republic of Kenya.” It was a privilege to own a passport and it could be recalled. Article 12 of the Constitution was supposed to address that mischief of just taking passports and suspending them without a clear basis. These and other things in our nation that are beginning to creep in should not be there. The leadership both on the other side and this side should deal with these problems so that we can build one nation called Kenya. You cannot build one nation called Kenya if we do not want to talk to each other. If one side of the nation says that they have sworn in somebody as the president of the people and that is the basis of arresting people and sending them to jail, what is the Constitution all about? In fact, that arrest was made without reading the Constitution properly. That oath was designed knowing what the Constitution says. Unless we control our madness and watch out, somewhere down the line, we will have anarchy in the country. My plea is; that let us have one country called Kenya under one Constitution. Regardless of whoever the President, Speaker of the Senate, Speaker of the National Assembly, Minority Leader and Majority Leader is, the Constitution is the guiding light and principle of the nation. Mr. Speaker, sir, with those remarks I beg to support and thank you for listening in silence."
}