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"id": 858320,
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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": "I have heard my colleagues ask why we cannot come up with an Act of Parliament to implement that requirement. That cannot pass. Why? When you try to legislate to bring more women to Parliament, you will be changing the size and composition of Parliament. The Constitution has already defined, under Article 97 and 98, who should be in Parliament. Therefore, for us to bring more women to Parliament through legislation, the only route available is the constitutional amendment. I want to quickly go to the content of the Bill before us. I know my colleague, Leader of the Majority Party, has talked about it. We are trying to amend three Articles of the Constitution. And under Article 97, we are amending it to bring a new section or clause that will state that we will have the number of special seat members necessary to ensure that no more than two-thirds of the members elected under Clause 1(a) are of the same gender. Under Clause 1(a), it is 290 constituencies. Quick calculation would be that a third of that, which is the threshold, is about 97. Given the fact that we already have 47 women Members elected from the 47 counties, that leaves you with a deficit of about 50 Members. Hon. Speaker, you can remove the six Members who are coming in through nomination. It is already in law and under the same Article 97 that we have 12 Members nominated, six of whom will definitely be women and six men. Now, that reduces even the number that is required further. During the last election, we were privileged as a country to have 23 women elected from single member constituencies. Therefore, if you we were to do that nomination now, even though we have to wait up to 2022, we would probably only need 21 or 22 more women to be nominated. At the Senate, you need not more than two. If you calculate the cost of these 24 Members of Parliament, it is not high. I have heard some of my colleagues mention the issue of cost and burden to the taxpayer. The net cost of 24 Members of Parliament; the salaries and other variable costs of maintaining a Member of Parliament in a financial year will not go beyond Kshs350 million. Is such a very heavy burden for this country to shoulder in order to realise an important principle? It is the principle of gender mainstreaming; the principle of including over 51 per cent of the population of this country into the political discourse of a country. That is a population that should have not, in the first place, been discriminated. To me, my answer is a plain no. This country can afford the Kshs350 million. As a matter of fact, I was joking with my colleagues but I meant it. I was telling my colleague who is seated next to me that the truth of the matter is that more is used even in a single county in this country. In one county like Homa Bay we will lose more than Kshs350million in a year. That is to people who do not deserve to get our money. Allow me to quickly address some important and fundamental issues regarding the process of this gender top up. By the way, looking at the drafting of this Constitution, we might not even have a problem at the Senate. In fact, in future we will have 16 women and another two guaranteed through youth and disability groups, that is 18 Members guaranteed. We may in future need to nominate men to the Senate. Actually, the danger is on men, given this Constitution. It is not women. So, this constitutional amendment is not just targeting women. For the moment it may look like we are trying to bring women to participate in the political affairs, which is true. Women have been discriminated over the years. But, in future you may find that we need this affirmative action to have more men nominated or brought to the National Assembly and the Senate. Allow me to address the last aspect that I wanted to talk about. It is the process of bringing women or having more women so to speak in the National Assembly and the Senate. In the event that we will not realise the one-third minimum required of either gender, political 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."
}