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"content": "Removal of IEBC Commissioners). Due to the importance of the matter at hand, I will quote a number of the findings in that Communication. The House was guided thus: “There is a universally accepted principle of democracy that “the majority shall have their way, but the minority shall also have their say”. This principle does not decree that the majority ought to emasculate the voices of the minority, nor does it give the minority a blanket cheque to say anything under the sun. To the contrary, this principle encourages the majority in any group to recognise and take into account the views of the minority in that group… In parliamentary parlance, the application of this principle is not new... The Chairperson rules on relevance. The indication of a minority report is a mechanism to allow the House to be acquainted with the completeness of the issues about which there has been disagreement, before the House can make a resolution… Hon. Members, the reading of these rules (Standing Order 199 (5) and (6) indicate that, as an advance of our previous practice, those with minority views have been accorded the higher privilege as they are allowed to have their views recorded substantially, and not just a mere mention and, in a rare occasion, have a dissenting report appended to the main report. This is in keeping with the spirit of our new Constitution to protect the rights of both the majority and the minority. However, should a committee not reach consensus, this does not imply that there should be two reports of a committee or a separate report compiled by the minority. The rule of thumb is that there can only be one report of a committee. That is the report that has been supported by the majority of the membership of the committee, which may contain, as part of it, a minority report.” Hon. Members, it is my considered view that some Members of the Joint Committee who had a contrary view to that held by the majority, lost an opportunity to prepare a minority report that would have, in my view, also enriched debate in the House by informing the House on the substance of the divergent views that may have been held by them. It lowers the dignity of the House when we fail to observe our own rules on anticipation of debate and taking it outside the House, and more importantly by not utilising avenues available to express our divergent views. Hon. Members, having disposed of the questions of authenticity of the Report and the probability of the missed steps, allow me now to inform the House that, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order No. 55, the Office of the Clerk did receive proposed amendments to the Report from three Hon. Members. These are the Majority Party Whip, Hon. Benjamin Washiali; the Member for Homa Bay, Hon. Gladys Wanga, and Nominated Member, Hon. Geoffrey Osotsi. As you may have noticed by now, those amendments are published in the Order Paper for this sitting, save for those proposed by the Majority Party Whip, which failed to meet the standard test of admissible amendments. For the information of the House, the Majority Party Whip was proposing to introduce new annexures and recommendations, whose basis was new evidence that he was proposing to introduce in the Report, by amending the Observations part of the Report. You will all agree with me that allowing such would have been procedurally untenable. Should the Member have intended to have that evidence considered, he should have tabled it either in the House when the matter was canvassed or in the Joint Committee sittings during the evidence taking sessions. Introducing new evidence at this penultimate stage will definitely present legal and procedural absurdity to the ordinary process of evidence taking as we know it! Hon. Members, I, indeed, found myself in a very awkward position that requires me to adjudicate on the content of a Report whose conceptualisation, evidence taking, and drafting I did not participate in. In summary therefore, I rule as follows: The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}