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{
    "id": 909092,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/909092/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 270,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Murkomen",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 440,
        "legal_name": "Onesimus Kipchumba Murkomen",
        "slug": "kipchumba-murkomen"
    },
    "content": "That can only be done if the Division of Revenue Bill has been done. The Division of Revenue Bill gives the national Government and the county governments a basket of the resources which they can then budget and appropriate. As I speak, the act of the CS does not worry me because it is strange in law. What concerns me is what the National Assembly will do once the Budget Estimates and Appropriation Bill has been delivered. They will have to shelve them until we complete the Division of Revenue Bill processes. That is what it should be. That is the exact process that we must follow. We cannot eject the National Assembly and neither can we say that they should not debate this appropriation and so forth. If they proceed with the Appropriation Bill as it is and attempt to pass it, my advice to the President would be that he should not sign it. However, if he goes ahead and signs such a law before the Division of Revenue Bill is agreed upon, then that law is null and void. In that case, the people of Kenya must declare that law null and void because the Constitution requires the Division of Revenue Bill to be passed by both Houses before going to that. Where are the checks and balances if the Constitution intended that the Division of Revenue Bill be ignored during the budgeting process? The failure of the Division of Revenue Bill at the national level was intended to push the National Assembly and the national Government to look for an agreement in good time. That is why the operations of the national Government were to stop together with those of the counties. If the national Government is to be allowed to just proceed as it is, then it means that they will not care of what happens to county governments. That is why they will always expect, as they did in this situation, us, the Senate, to go to mediation and just say that ‘we agree with your figure’ because we do not want the operations of the counties to fail. There is an erroneous process or mentality implanted in the minds of the people in the national Government and the National Assembly. They think that we are still running a centralised system of Government or that the national Government is giving donations to county governments. Let it be known that both the national and county governments depend on Parliament to allocate for them money through the budget process. None of them is superior to the other when it comes to allocation of that money. In as much as the CS has a responsibility for the overall budget, Parliament has to treat counties as a whole and the national Government as a whole. It has to allocate the resources with equity. People have to stop saying that they have helped counties or that they have given them more money. The national Government and counties are both given money by the people of Kenya through Parliament. They are all to account for that money through county assemblies, the National Assembly or the Senate. We are in an important historical moment. The challenges we are going through right now are not new. We have dealt with them for the last six years. At the moment, there is a spirit of knowledge moving around the country where people are getting to recognise the things that we used to talk about. Previously, people would ask for the disbandment of the Senate when we talked. They would say that we had slept on the job. However, the mediation process on the Division of Revenue Bill has received national interest and scrutiny in a way that it has never received in the last six years. This is an opportunity for us to make this case to the logical conclusion. I am glad that some civil 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."
}