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"id": 901667,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/901667/?format=api",
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"speaker_name": "Sen. Orengo",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Minority Leader",
"speaker": {
"id": 129,
"legal_name": "Aggrey James Orengo",
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"content": "Officers are not signed. In fact, in the first Presidential election during the 2017 elections, the Supreme Court of Kenya found fault with forms that were not signed by election officials. On that basis, the elections validity and transparency were called into question. When it comes to an individual candidate, I see that there is no distinction between candidate and an agent of the candidate. What if the candidate was not there and the agent refuse to sign? The criminality will fall on the agent or by the extension the candidate. It does not matter which, it may raise some controversy. I ask my friend, the distinguished Senator from Narok, that we need to look at Clause 4 appropriately so that we do not criminalize the electoral process too much because it is done in the heat of the moment. I fully support the body of the Bill as a whole safe for the question of definition of results. For example, what are results when they are declared? I remember that in the case that I have referred to from Kisii County, there was a question as to what were the declared results. Were they the results declared by the returning officer or the ones that were subsequently declared in the Kenya gazette? This is because time was supposed to run when the results were declared. If they were computed from the time they were declared by the returning officer against gazettement, it brought a lot of controversy as to when the filing of the petition should have been due. Therefore, this is a matter which may just require a little amendment. I commend my colleague from Narok, Sen. Ole kina, for his industry. This is because perpetually, almost every week, there is a Bill for a rightful discussion from the distinguished Senator. However, I finish by saying that 50 years after Independence and running many elections, I hope that Kenya will not have another election where the results are in doubt. Madam Temporary Speaker, in South Africa, if you look at the room where the votes were tallied, there was order. In fact, all the leaders of the political parties would sit there quietly, receiving, monitoring and observing the results as they came. In fact, in the previous elections when President Zuma was the President, he sat at the tallying centre and the only thing that happened was that a little girl was carrying a placard which was not very interesting to him at the time. We should learn from the experiences of countries like Ghana and South Africa and examples from more complicated democracies like India where the number of registered voters is more than the population of Africa, however, they are able to undertake elections that run across the country. For example, federal and state elections are completed and presided over by one commissioner who has a large secretariat and people working for him. Therefore, we should mature as a country. Right from the time we enacted constitutional amendment to make Kenya a multiparty State, only the election of 2002 were inversely accepted in terms of the results. Before and subsequently, all the elections have had some controversy. Therefore, I plead that Kenya must come of age in the democracy project. We need to have free and fair elections. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) should not push the responsibility to anybody else. This is because that responsibility as an independent commission squarely falls with the Commission. Madam Temporary Speaker, with those remarks, I support. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}