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{
    "id": 824982,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/824982/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 186,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kikuyu, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1835,
        "legal_name": "Anthony Kimani Ichung'Wah",
        "slug": "anthony-kimani-ichungwah"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Speaker. I beg to support. More so, as two or three previous speakers, including the Deputy Speaker have said, this will indeed create order in the House. As much as the Hon. Speaker is always calling us to order, it is not repeating myself to say that indeed, in the recent past, we have as Members been quite disorderly especially on what the Leader of the Minority Party has spoken about. Members go out not just to speak to the media, but to also speak outside here at the Media Centre. They do so accusing their colleagues of things they cannot substantiate, either out there or even in this Chamber. Therefore, I beg to support this Motion, especially on Members we are calling friends of committees. It is good that we will now allow Chairperson of a Committee to have the prerogative to either admit or not admit a Member to a committee sitting. It is good also to give notice to the Chairperson, or through the Chairperson of the committee on the substantive issues that a Member wishes to raise. It is very important for the sake of creating order. What we have seen is, indeed, what has become common practice that these “friends of committees” know that after about 40 or 45 minutes the substantive Members of that committee may opt to leave committee meetings. They then take over the deliberations of committee meetings knowing that they do not even form part of the quorum. It is very easy for the friends of committees to take over committee sittings. We have said it in the past, not just on the Sugar Report. The Leader of the Minority Party has just alluded to what happened last week in the Departmental Committee on Lands and many other committees, including the two watchdog committees of Public Investments Committee (PIC) and Public Accounts Committee (PAC). We have seen friends of committees do it. It is usually people who have very peculiar interests in matters that are being deliberated in those committees who will purport to appear before those committees. Friends of committees are usually people with peculiar interest in matters that are being deliberated in committees. These friends purport to appear before committees to defend other courses other than those of justice and getting what will be helping the committees in the deliberations before it. Therefore, I support the issue of Members giving a 24-hour notice to the chairperson stating what issues they want to raise before the committee. This is so that the chairpersons can establish if there are issues that are outside the purview of that committee or outside the purview of what is being deliberated in the committee. Hon. Junet sits there on behalf of the Speaker. Therefore, the chairperson can decide that those issues that you have put in writing 24 hours before do not warrant to be raised before that committee sitting and therefore not allow them. This will also give the chairpersons of committees the prerogative to exclude any friend of the committee from the deliberations of the committees. There are very many pertinent issues that are usually handled by committees, but as 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."
}