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{
    "id": 991935,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/991935/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 240,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sakaja",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13131,
        "legal_name": "Johnson Arthur Sakaja",
        "slug": "johnson-arthur-sakaja"
    },
    "content": "looked at our proposal. We have friends there such as Mr. Evans Monari and others and they gave very practical interventions. The Kenya Bankers Association was very pragmatic in as much as they have been affected so much. They said that they will change one or two things but agreed with what was making sense in the Bill. They reported that as of last week, they had received more than 20,000 requests from their clients. The clients were requesting them to restructure loans amounting to Kshs160 billion and they had acceded to those requests. A pandemic period is a time for Kenyans and all the leaders to come together. You will remember that I was opposed to the adjournment of this House at the beginning of this pandemic. I said that a pandemic is like war and that the generals do not disappear during war because they have to be at the frontline. As a Senate, we could not go home because everybody needed solution and oversight. In fact, we have seen real generals during this pandemic in the name of Members of this House, private citizens, public institutions and the Ministry of Health. However, I want to single out the Cabinet Secretary (CS) for the Ministry of Health, Sen. Mutahi Kagwe, for the tremendous work that he is doing. I refer to him as Sen. Kagwe because he insisted that he was still a Senator when he came to the meeting. I would want to reiterate that oversight has not been suspended and neither has the rule of law and the Constitution been suspended. We are oversighting. We have been telling the CS and his team what is not going well and what they need to look at. This Bill provides that it will take primacy when it is in operation and it will only be in operation when the President declares a pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) provides protocols on how a pandemic is declared. Based on its analysis and the reports that it gets from state parties, it declares the pandemic and communicates to the presidents of state parties. The Bill provides that the National Security Council, on the advice of the Cabinet Secretary for the Ministry of Health, will recommend that the President declares a pandemic. When the President declares that there is a pandemic, this Bill will take effect and it will only stop being effective when the President declares that the pandemic is over. At that point, if any other law is in contravention with this Bill, then this law will take effect and full force but that does not include the Constitution. You are a law professor and I cannot even try to tell you the doctrine of implied repeal or the doctrine of precedence supremacy of a law at the point of its application. Members of the private sector told us that we are setting up a committee that only includes the Government. They asked us to make amendments so as to include them. That is why I believe that this Bill might look different in many aspects after the Committee stage. We also noted that there is a challenge of coordination between national and county governments and that is why this Bill affirms that the county governments must have a coordination mechanism with the national committee and their county committees. The county committees will have a national Government representative through the county commissioner. At the national committee, the counties will be represented through the Council of Governors and the parliamentary leaders can also be represented to a certain extent so as not to blur the lines of separation of power."
}