Lucas Kipkosgei Chepkitony

All parliamentary appearances

Entries 311 to 320 of 624.

• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the history of making any constitution anywhere in the world is always difficult. In Kenya, we have taken a long historical route to get to where we are today. Therefore, it is very important for us to say what we think about this Constitution and try to resolve what we can resolve in this House before we go to do street battles like it happened in the year 2005. view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, when you look at the document done by the Committee of Experts, I, who participated from the Parliamentary Select Committee’s point of view feel that they have done a good job. In my view, they have done a good job. This Constitution is supposed to be for posterity, and from that point of view, they have done a good job. Our opportunity now is to make it a better Constitution than what they have given us in draft by contributing and actually debating on what we think we can improve on here, rather than keeping quiet ... view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there are, of course, several things that one can look at, and which are a bit difficult. But, first of all, I am disappointed that hon. Wakoli has left after telling us how he arrived in this world, because I wanted to tell him my point of view. view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: The whole concept of abortion is a very emotive matter. I know that nobody is saying that they want to legalise abortion. As far as I know, in medical terms, when you talk of termination of pregnancy for whatever reasons, even medical ones, it is called “abortion”. So, let us study that carefully because I would have liked to ask my wonderful teacher friend what he would do if his daughter was going through a miscarriage and a doctor would not touch that child because he would be prosecuted just because, legally, in the Constitution, we have said that we ... view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there are some other things which are in this Constitution. For example, the way we think about women in our country. I see this everywhere. There is a tendency to trivialise what women can do in our society hence the need by many people, especially, the human rights activists, to fight for women to have positions in politics. We have proved beyond reasonable doubt that as lawyers and public servants, we have done well. Kenya, which has been a leader in development, lags behind when you look at what women are doing in politics. So, it ... view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I stand here to say that we should have this for the women. I am one of those women, like many of my colleagues here, who believe that “I can run for an election and win.” However, that is not to say that other women will be able to do the same. In the sunset clauses, we said that we wanted this to happen for only 20 years and after that it goes back to the usual system. I think my colleagues should continue to support that for us. view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: There are issues in this Constitution which even though we support, we know will cause difficulties. A few people, including the last speaker have mentioned it. I am talking about land. Land is private property. If we have different legislation for land as we do for private property, we have to really come up with a very good reason why we want to say that if you have this amount of land it will be taken away from you. Of course we recognise what has been said constantly by the Ministry of Lands; that there are people who hold large ... view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, when Kenyans said that they wanted a new Constitution all these years, their desire was mainly centred on demystifying the presidency. In other words, we constantly said that we did not want a President who was altogether too powerful and who could do whatever they wanted. We have now gone round, have argued, discussed at Naivasha and in this House and even through various caucuses. We have come down to a presidency which we support. However, in order for this not to be an imperial presidency, we must be very serious about checks and balances. We ... view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we went back to the record of the Bomas process and looked at what everyone had said and came out with the counties. I think the CoE went ahead with that as our suggestion and also because of the historical journey that we had taken in writing this Draft Constitution. Now that we still have those counties in this Draft Constitution, my view would be that we can make them workable as a level of devolution. I feel that this way, we will satisfy those people who are afraid of a centre that is too far, ... view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: When we speak about devolution we are, of course, seriously thinking not only of an imperial presidency, but we are also thinking of how we can get equity in distribution of the resources of this country. I know, for example, that when the KCPE results are released, we celebrate about how this student has done well; this is the top girl in the country and this is the top boy in the country, but we never ask ourselves one question: How is it that some regions cannot do as well as others? It is because if today you are in ... view