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{
    "id": 886637,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/886637/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 307,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sakaja",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13131,
        "legal_name": "Johnson Arthur Sakaja",
        "slug": "johnson-arthur-sakaja"
    },
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, I note that the acting Leader of Majority is trying to rush that you put the question while we want to contribute to this. First of all, I support this Motion of the swap. Sen. Ochillo-Ayacko being a former Minister of Energy, is well suited to be a Member of the Standing Committee on Energy and Sen. Chebeni will bring the much needed vigour to re-invigorate the Standing Committee on National Cohesion, Equal Opportunity and Regional Integration. The reason I wanted to contribute is this, I strongly feel - and I am glad the Minority Leader is here - that we need to rejig and reinvigorate our Committees. Members should be in Committees which they are interested in. We have some Committees and - I will not mention them - where we are seeing a lot of lethargy. Committees that are supposed to be dealing with very important issues and we do not know whether this is caused by lack of interest from those Members. These are issues that are on the national conversation every day and they are devolved functions. Therefore, we need the Senate to be involved in them. In the spirit of the handshake, Sen. Malalah, as Leader of Minority, we can even change the leadership of some of our Committees. Let us have a taste of some of the Members from the National Super Alliance (NASA) being Chairpersons or Vice Chairpersons of committees. I am a Chairperson and a Vice Chairperson and I am willing to let go of any of the two positions to be taken up by someone else. People should not feel like they own Committees. You do not own Committees. The Senate in its entirety is supposed to play an oversight role. Madam Temporary Speaker, there is no Opposition or Government in the Senate because we are oversighting county governments. There are county governments that have Jubilee Governors while other county governments have NASA Governors. Within the leadership of these Committees in the Senate, let us see a better mix. Sen. (Dr.) Zani will tell you that in the last Parliament we were both in the Standing Committee on National Cohesion, Equal Opportunity and Regional Integration. It was a joint Committee of both Houses. You can imagine how difficult it was. It had 15 Senators and 15 Members of the National Assembly. Due to the level of interest we had in cohesion, I think we made a record that I am not sure any other Committee has been able to achieve. We visited 34 counties in this country. We did peace deals between warring communities that to date, because of what we did, they have not fought again in those areas where we went to."
}