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"id": 844521,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/844521/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Suba South, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. John Mbadi",
"speaker": {
"id": 110,
"legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
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"content": " Hon. Speaker, they just amend Article 108 of the Constitution and the answer shall be found. Hon. Speaker, thank you for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this Motion. First, I do not want to belabour the point that we have a number of Kenyans among these nominees who actually qualify. I do not want to repeat what my colleagues have said about Dalmas Otieno. We all know who he is. I really do not know many of these nominees, but I am relying on the Report of the Committee. However, on the issue of this lady, Ashubwe, I think that is the point of contention. I seriously want to fault the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning. I want to repeat. The Chair of the Committee is not even listening. It is interesting that we are allowing our Committees not to do a thorough job as we task them to do. I say this because, as Hon. Wanga said, what Hon. Makali Mulu quoted are 14 points about this lady Ashubwe and these 14 points have come from a Petition from one Charles Mukhwana, who is a very good friend of mine. According to the Committee, the Petition was not legitimate. It was invalid. Therefore, how do you reproduce a Petition that you have determined to be invalid and then you make us get confused into thinking that these were the findings of the Committee? That just demonstrates that the Committee did not really exercise caution when drafting this Report. More fundamentally, when we give opportunity to nominating bodies to do some work, we also have to give them space to do that work and do it thoroughly. The COTU-K did this nomination on behalf of the employees of this country. I respect Hon. Omboko Milemba, who is also leading a very important trade union. But if you asked any Kenyan to tell you the trade union that Kenyans associate with more in terms of representing workers, you will be told it is COTU-K. You may not like Atwoli but once COTU-K has done something, respect it. I think someone somewhere is trying to fight Atwoli through this appointment. It is not our business to be in Parliament to help other people fight their wars with one Francis Atwoli. If you want to fight Atwoli, go and fight him out there. But you cannot scandalise and deny a Kenyan who has qualified to be in a commission, just because you do not like Atwoli. I cannot agree more with my colleagues who have identified the error in trying to deny this lady an opportunity to be in the SRC. To me, the ground set out by the Committee is very trivial. You cannot talk about negotiation or diplomacy when those were not requirements. We expected this Committee, in approving or denying the approval, to explicitly state according to the law as spelt out in this Act. They should have told us that this lady does not qualify because of not meeting this requirement, like we have extensively discussed the issue of Halima, although in a form of a point of order. We were purely discussing the qualifications. When we bring the case of Nelly Ashubwe, now it is the issue of diplomacy and negotiation. I do not want to go the direction of appearance or whatever it is. This House must send a warning to this Committee and any other committee that will play around with the vetting process. The vetting process is very important in a presidential system. We should not take it so casually. In my view, this Committee took this job so casually. That should not be encouraged. Hon. Limo should listen to me. He is actually my junior and a very good friend of mine. So, he should listen to me. Next time we give you a job, please, we expect that job to be done with professionalism and not with favouritism and other considerations external to this Parliament. I support the Motion, but with variation that, when it comes to voting, we are going to defeat part (b) and bring back that lady to the Commission. Probably, this is the person we need. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}