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{
    "id": 928152,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/928152/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 309,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ndaragwa, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Jeremiah Kioni",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 49,
        "legal_name": "Jeremiah Ngayu Kioni",
        "slug": "jeremiah-kioni"
    },
    "content": "but I think it is good to give them credit where it is due. They did a good job. We had issues with it and we were not quite happy. A section of us or many of us may not have been very happy with the results, but they still helped us to stabilise the country and we are where we are because of what they did and we are moving on as a country. It is important to reflect on what Members are saying. There is need for more consultations and public participation. My experience with these Bills is that you advertise, put notifications in the newspapers and even use other means to try and get public participation, but the level of public participation that I witness at different times is really worrying. I am not sure that we will get much from the public even if we are to extend the period of time for them to contribute to this Bill. There is a tendency for us to wait until it is too late and then we start saying that we have been left out. The fact is that elections in this country will always be emotive at least for the foreseeable future. It is important that we discuss these issues now. I thank the Departmental Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs and the other Committees, including my Committee, which has come up with this initiative for starting the debate this early where we have time to agree and disagree until we get a workable solution. Those of us who thought that we needed to send the commissioners home in total need to appreciate that the procedure of sending them home is in the Constitution. There is no shortcut. These are constitutional officers and you cannot send any commissioner home by just declaring it from a platform or podium of one nature or the other. There is a procedure in the Constitution. If there is anybody who would want us to do the same, he will still have to follow that procedure. It is important that we make sure that we give the IEBC the constitutional and legal mandate that is required. I have mentioned that those who audited the work that was done by the IEBC in 2017 returned very good reports. Those reports have been brought to this House. It is important to also read the spirit of the Constitution. When talking about constitutional commissions, we started with nine members. The reason why we started with nine members in a commission is because we were trying to have that elusive regional balance where we thought that it will only work if one of our own is in it. We have seen that, that is not the way it will work. It cannot work that way. It is important that we start trusting the persons that we put into those commissions. The spirit of the Constitution is to move from nine and head towards three commissioners and three who are part-timers. It is not to go towards nine, 11 and beyond. In any case, you cannot go beyond nine because of the constitutional limit. That is the issue of the panel that we have before us. Outside the panel, we also have the issue of the boundaries. We also need to make sure that the IEBC is able to commence on the issue of boundary delimitation that is supposed to be done as provided in the Constitution. There is more than just the panel. We need to give them a mandate. We need to amend the law so that they can undertake the second boundary review. As we do this, it is important to put the panel in place. Recall what happened in 2017. We had to bring political players together in some ad hoc select sommittee of the Senate and the National Assembly to try and hammer out an agreement. I do not want to say it but it is what it is. The Parliament of that time had failed to enact the law in good time. It is important to appreciate that we in the 12th Parliament are seizing the moment that is availed to us by making sure that the law that needs to be in place is in place. We now have the Aukot attempt outside there. Some of these attempts and many others will come forward as long as we, seated here in Parliament, do not do what is expected of us in good time. 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."
}