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"id": 959910,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/959910/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Rarieda, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) Otiende Amollo",
"speaker": {
"id": 13465,
"legal_name": "Paul Otiende Amollo",
"slug": "paul-otiende-amollo"
},
"content": " Thank you, Hon. Speaker. Allow me to lend my voice to this matter which you have made a ruling and to urge that, as the Committee looks at it, there are three critical things we must look into. The first one is the decision of the court that you allude to. Indeed, the court determined that while you could be eligible, you cannot take the oath of office. I urge that, as a House, we examine that decision further because Article 78 of the Constitution says that you are not eligible. If you are not eligible, should this House that takes the time of all Kenyans consider a person who is not eligible for some office? I want to urge that this might be one of these areas where we may need to have a departure from that court decision. While the court decision is right in terms of taking the oath of office, for us, we must consider whether we want to act in vain as a House that detain the time of Kenyans. Hon. Speaker, I urge that you might consider that if you are not eligible, then we cannot debate your appointment because we will be acting in vain. If we debate your appointment and pass it with conditions, then we are giving the President a discretion that he does not have under the Constitution. There are many offices where the Constitution says once we approve, then the President appoints. If we pass with conditions, then we are introducing a rider that the President is at liberty to consider whether that condition has been met. I urge that in future, we might want to reconsider that. Secondly, I also urge that we reconsider the conditions and preconditions that we put to some of those officers. I was not around at the time of the debate and of course this House acts in all its wisdom and it must have been well instructed, but that instruction does not flow from the constitution. On the face of the Constitution in Articles 78 and 260 that define state officers, ambassadors are not state officers on the face of it. However, in its wisdom, the House decided that she had to relinquish her position. While it may not be expressly put on the face of the Constitution, once this House makes that demand, I suggest that she only had two options; either says I do not agree and, therefore, I will not take that job but, if she agrees, then she has to comply. For us, I think it will be a question... Do we want to expand the ambit of state officers as defined in the Constitution? This is because right now, ambassadors are not in the Constitution. If we do, is it wise or is it not wise? There might be perfect situations where we might actually, and this happens in some countries. In these countries, there are states that do not have ambassadors. They actually have Kenyans acting in the place of their consulate. Is it conceivable that even we as a country might want to be in a situation where we use proxies? If we look at that we might want, in future, to reconsider our insistence that all ambassadors must not hold dual citizenship. 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."
}