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{
    "id": 892654,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/892654/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 189,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ugunja, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. OpiyoWandayi",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2960,
        "legal_name": "James Opiyo Wandayi",
        "slug": "james-opiyo-wandayi"
    },
    "content": "Pursuant to this Standing Order and the relevant provision of the Constitution, my Committee undertook the task of examining the accounts of IEBC for the 2016/2017 Financial Year. I must also point out that the reason this Report appears special is that in the year under review - the following financial year - is when the elections of 2017 were held. Therefore, the Auditor-General, in his wisdom in undertaking the audit of IEBC for FY 2016/2017, went beyond and got into the FY 2017/2018 because this Report covers up to and including the time of the repeat presidential election of 26th October, 2017. Therefore, it is a Special Report. I know this Report has ruffled feathers. This Report has stepped, as it were, on very sensitive toes. In my experience in this House – this is now my seventh year – I have come to realise one thing: That any time you see a Report of the House coming here, being debated and being adopted or otherwise rejected without much acrimony or controversy, then perhaps that Report has not touched on the nerves of the issues at hand. I can now attest to that. Therefore, I am not surprised that this particular Report of PAC on IEBC has generated the kind of controversy it has. I am not surprised at all. I want to thank my Committee members for the resilience they have exhibited. I now know for sure that operating within PAC is not a walk in the park. It is not. My Committee members have worked very courageously in the face of a lot of challenges, including blackmail and intimidation. In summary, when we went through these accounts of the IEBC, a number of issues came out very clearly; a number of issues were established and I want to mention them in passing, very briefly. One was the blatant violation of the Constitution by the commissioners and officers of the IEBC who were given the task to run the Commission. I want to take you to the Constitution. Article 227(1) says: “When a state organ or any other public entity contracts for goods or services, it shall do so in accordance with a system that is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost effective.” You may want to refer to the provisions of the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act, particularly Section 102 that deals with restricted tendering and Section 103 that deals with direct procurement. You will agree with me that following our observations and findings, more than 90 per cent of procurement of critical goods and services by IEBC during the period under review was done in a manner that contravenes not only the Constitution but also the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act as it then was. There was a clear pattern for the procurement of these goods and services to be done purportedly under Sections 102 and 103 of the Act. Those two sections provide very clearly circumstances under which a procuring entity can resort to either restricted tendering or direct procurement. Our close examination and scrutiny of these procurement activities revealed to us that the use of those particular sections of the Act was not justifiable. You can go on and on. There is also the question of wastage of public funds, because once you go direct procurement or restricted tendering, you deny the public the advantage of ensuring that it gets value for its money because you reduce competition in a sense and that really jeopardises the public. We are talking about procurement values running into billions of shillings. I also want to 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."
}