Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 945191,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/945191/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 259,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Seme, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) James Nyikal",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 434,
        "legal_name": "James Nyikal",
        "slug": "james-nyikal"
    },
    "content": " Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I congratulate him as well. He was distracted. After the CIC ceased to be, nobody looked at the Constitution. This is the first time the Committee is dealing with it. I want to encourage this hardworking Committee to look at other parts of the Constitution that need enactment of laws like Articles 27 and 81 although in these cases, they do not say “Parliament shall.” It is the State that is supposed to take measures, legislative or otherwise. If that is done, it will make the Constitution a more progressive document. There are two basic issues that are coming out. These issues come from what could be a defect in the Constitution. This Committee has come up with a Bill and we have no option, but to live with it. One of them is the definition of “special interest groups”. As everybody has said, the inclusion of women has a problem. Women are 51 per cent of the population. Within the youth, women are half. So, if you take a quarter and a half of women, you will only have one quarter of the population that is not in the “special interest groups.” That is not to say that affirmative action is not needed for women, it is needed but if you look at, for example, Article 27 of the Constitution, it is clear. It has provided for affirmative action. It has stated clearly that women and men shall be treated in the same way. I do not think it was necessary to bring women into the special interest groups. That is what is bringing a challenge. It has been repeated all through in the Constitution. The other basic issue from the Constitution is inclusion of numbers to be achieved through an electoral process. There is no way you can predict a number through an elective process. The third issue that we must accept is that once we agree that we are going to give affirmative action to a group, particularly if the group is defined as small, we cannot turn around and say, for example, if you give them finances, we are discriminative. Affirmative action by itself is discriminative in favour of an identified group. If we look at those three issues, we will find it easy to deal with this Bill. Some of the issues cannot be dealt with through the Bill. We will have to go back to the Constitution. We cannot achieve the two-thirds gender rule because it is a number that you cannot get through an elective process. You must institute an administrative process like in Article 177 of the Constitution that deals with the membership of county assembly. So, if those three issues will be taken into consideration, I will support the Bill. There are a few things that I will point out from the Bill. Clause 5 says that you will have disaggregation of data on the voters roll on the basis of all categories of special interest groups. What I am wondering is whether we are going to look at the voters register and say, for example, that these are women or these are people with disability. Of what use will that be? They are not going to vote for themselves. They are voters like anybody else. So, that is something that we need to correct. Under the same clause, there are proposals that I like, for example, sub-clause (d) that says communication modes should be accessible to persons with disabilities. That is important. If you put out materials in one format, they may not communicate to persons with disabilities. So, you may need braille, sign language and talking machines. The same is provided in Clause 8(a) which talks about posting information on websites in a manner and form that is accessible to all persons including special interest groups. However, there is a problem in the 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."
}