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"content": "level of the Supreme Court although I can see that the Senator of that area is trying to intervene to see if he can reconcile the two leaders. Therefore, this power is important. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Chairperson of the Committee has explained in detail what is in the Bill. The Seconder, Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr. has also given in detail, not only what is there, but also talked about our experience in this regard. Therefore, I will be very brief. First, I want to emphasize that gross violation and gross misconduct in the Constitution, is a ground that runs through impeachment of a President, Deputy President, Governor and Cabinet Secretary. However, when it comes to the CEC, we have been a bit detailed in this Bill. For the CECs, we have not just talked about gross misconduct, gross violation of the Constitution and so on. Since they are not mentioned in the Constitution, it became necessary to mention the grounds in the Bill. I believe we have borrowed almost word for word from the County Governments Act. We have said the CEC can be removed because of incompetence, abuse of office, gross misconduct, physical and mental incapacity and gross violation of the Constitution. We have also added incompetence and abuse of office. As we know, abuse of office is an offence under the Penal Code. It is also an offence under the Ethics and Anti Corruption Commission Act. This is so that in the exercise of these powers, we cannot be frivolous. We cannot use personal vendetta or personal agenda in exercising these powers, for to do so, we would be behaving in violation of and against the spirit of the Constitution. I am saying this because when you hear what happened in the last term – and this came out very clearly in the case of Makueni County, if a CEC was not able to do what the MCAs wanted, they would leave his or her office and say: “We shall meet in the Chamber. We will impeach you.” That was always the threat. When we went round, as the Committee on Devolved Government then, that was the common threat by MCAs who were threatening CECs that if they did not do what they wanted such as provide for a certain road, they would impeach them. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this can also be a threat which can come to the national level, if misused. Members of the National Assembly can also use that as a threat to Members of the Executive that: “If you do not do “A”, “B” and “C”, you will be impeached.” Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I was the Attorney-General of this country for many years. At that time, I knew people who were very prone to a Motion of no confidence against them, while by the nature of their offices, they were doing what they were required to do in the Constitution, which was not necessarily popular with the people. Here, I speak particularly of the Office of the Attorney-General at that time. The Office of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) is the one who is exercising those powers now. I was speaking particularly also of the Principal Secretary (PS) for the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government and the PS in the Ministry of Finance. Those three offices are prone to threats of impeachment or Motions of no confidence from the Members of the Legislature because “you have not done one or two things in my constituency,” and so on, and so forth. We are saying here that this power should not be The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes"
}