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{
    "id": 838425,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/838425/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 92,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nakuru Town East, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. David Gikaria",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2489,
        "legal_name": "David Gikaria",
        "slug": "david-gikaria"
    },
    "content": "If, indeed, we are to change the elections date, the conversation is that maybe we also need to get some advice from the Supreme Court. Our elections were supposed to have been held on 8th August 2017. Unfortunately, because of a repeat election, it was pushed to 26th of October. It means that if we push our elections to December, then we will have exceeded the term of office of the President by almost a month or two months if the elections are going to be held in December 2022. I wish Hon. Wamalwa was here. We can check the HANSARD unless he was saying that we do the elections in December 2021. That would make some sense because it will not be moving the term of office of the President. If, indeed, the HANSARD shows that he said that it should be pushed to December 2022, then I think we will just be debating in vain. People will go to court irrespective of what we have passed. It is not once or twice that we have sat in this House and passed some legislation which members of the public have gone to court to challenge and those legislations have been termed unconstitutional. So, it will only be fair for us to look at the Constitution and respect it. If we start going against the Constitution… Of course, I know Hon. Chris Wamalwa was not doing this for purposes of us earning a few months’ salary. I think he was genuine in his concern. Hon. David Ochieng’s made submissions in the 11th Parliament and he expounded. It was true that others were not only about circumcision, as Hon. Kaluma was saying. Others were saying this is harvesting time. The nomads or the people who move from one place to another said that normally this is a very dry period and they are not in their respective areas. I know Hon. Chris Wamalwa must have given very valid reasons. But for the purposes of the Constitution, under Article 256, for us to sit here, we will be doing an amendment by parliamentary initiative. This is another question that we have always been asking. Are we doing an amendment through a Motion by Hon. Chris Wamalwa? Is it a Motion of Parliament or is it an amendment by parliamentary initiative? Again, this is something that we need to ask ourselves. It is not right for us as Members to be amending a Constitution through just a normal procedural Motion. It is not right. I think we need to take our Constitution seriously. Let us not use this House to amend the Constitution through Motions. I thought Hon. Chris Wamalwa should have dealt with Article 256 of the Constitution. If you want to amend the Constitution through parliamentary initiative, the process and requirements are very clear in our Constitution. It is not that I do not support what Hon. Chris Wamalwa was saying. It is important for Parliament not to speak and debate in vain so that as we approve and pass Motions on this Floor, at the end of the day, those Motions or whatever we are doing in Parliament will see the light of the day. It is important, as we talk of a referendum, to see whether it is okay to have a referendum that will be voted for by Kenyans. Could we pick what Hon. Chris Wamalwa has indicated here as part of the question that will be in that referendum? It is not easy. The debate out there in the public is ripe. People are saying that the wage bill is high and we need to reduce representation. It is the same members of the public who said that they wanted representation closer to them. That is why we introduced devolution. That is why we have constituencies and wards. This is another aspect that we need to look at. If we will, indeed, have a referendum, this is a question that Hon. Chris Wamalwa needs to table in this House in future so that we can consider it. Article 255(2) of the Constitution on amendment of the Constitution states: “A proposed amendment shall be approved by a referendum under Clause (1) if– (a) at least twenty per cent of the registered voters in each of at least half of the counties vote in the referendum; and, 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."
}