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{
    "id": 902502,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/902502/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 327,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Pareno",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13180,
        "legal_name": "Judith Ramaita Pareno",
        "slug": "judith-ramaita-pareno"
    },
    "content": "President look at this constitutional provision. It is a right. It is no longer business as usual when we do not have things in place. I am aware that there are court decisions on this; that, you must comply with this constitutional provision. In fact, the court has made several rulings on it yet nobody seems to put into effect what these courts have said about us complying with our Constitution. We came up with this constitutional provision of having this two-third gender rule because of the history of this country. It is also because we wish well for this country. It came out clearly from Kenyans. Whatever is in the 2010 Constitution is after public participation by all Kenyans. Therefore, I do not know why it is so difficult. If it is difficult in terms of elections, when people decide it is the people who vote and they end up not voting women, it should not have been even difficult when it comes to appointment of ambassadors. We have had recent appointments of ambassadors and boards of parastatals. Have we even complied on the two-third gender rule? We have not. If we are serious, we should emulate our sister country for example, Rwanda. I went there for election observation. In fact, they increased the number of women in this election from the last election to 61 per cent of the entire membership in their Parliament. So this country must be having an issue that we do not know. However, we know, we are just pretending that we do not. Rwanda is doing so well in development. In fact, Kigali was rated the cleanest city in Africa. The other day, media reports indicated that they have drones that deliver medicines to hospitals yet in our country, people still die. We cannot even copy simple good acts of our young sister country that is doing so well. We should even copy from their leadership characteristic. In our election observation mission, we found out that in the first day, there is early election for people with disability then on another day they have elections for women alone. This is so that they are given a conducive environment to choose their leaders and top up on the two- third gender rule. You can imagine how peaceful it was. When we went to the polling stations, we found patriotic songs being played. There was a Disc Jockey (DJ) somewhere playing patriotic songs in a polling station. I did not see a police officer anywhere near the polling station. There were only patriotic songs of the country. There were flowers on the table next to the ballot boxes. The polling station was decorated with different fabrics with national colours. People sang as they went to vote. What a country? On the other hand, here, the first thing you encounter as a woman is your legs and hands being broken. Your car is also vandalized before you even get anywhere near the voting day. By the time of the voting day, you are faceless. We do not have the right and conducive environment that we should create as a country yet we brag to be the big sister in East Africa. We are not even leading the way to show that we can do it better. Therefore, we need to get serious on this two-third gender rule. We need to see the two-third gender rule being applied during appointment of cabinet secretaries and ambassadors. The other political parties should catch up with ODM. The ODM structures start from the grassroots. We do have a women‘s league right from the polling station to the national level and we have women in leadership within the party. That is why some of us are where we are today. 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."
}