Prof. Margaret Kamar

All parliamentary appearances

Entries 1781 to 1790 of 3067.

• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is worth noting that this draft has continued also to change progressively. That is from the Bomas Draft of 2004 to the Harmonised Draft published in 2009, Revised Harmonised Draft that followed, of course, the current Proposed Draft before this House. So, we have every reason to agree to look at the document. If there is anything that those of us who were not in Naivasha feel was mutilated or feel must be borrowed from the current Constitution, we should be able to address it, so that we give Kenyans a Constitution that will serve ... view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there are also real issues that we need to look at. That is why I support that the document must be opened. I will highlight a few examples. There is the Supremacy of the Constitution Article 2, Clause 5. It says: view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: “The general rules of international law shall form part of the law of Kenya.” view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: That is very scaring because we have given a blanket cheque to international law reformers. We want to open our country to any law that comes from the international community. We need to open up this document, so that we deal with issues like that. We must ratify any international law in this House. Any glaring error like that must be dealt with. view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Clause 11(2)(c) has done promotion of intellectual property rights very well. But when you go down to the legislation by this House, this document denies the House the opportunity to legislate on indigenous knowledge. The whole essence of the intellectual property rights lies in the protection of the knowledge. Our indigenous people have a lot of knowledge that must be protected. Today, we enjoy Chinese tea and herbs. However, we do not want to legislate and protect our tea and herbs. There are a lot of trees with medicinal value that require protection. But beyond that, we must also protect ... view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is the limitation of rights and fundamental freedom, Clause 24, the favourable of hon. Nkaisserry. It is on the freedom of association, assembly, demonstrations and labour relations for the Kenya defence forces and national police forces. We raised this because we did not know who the defence forces were and or national police forces. We are informed that it does not cover the prison and Kenya Wildlife Service warders. If we do not correct this document, it will mean that the prison warders can also have their own union. They can go on strike. We ... view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is the issue of the right to life, Clause 26. Who are we listening to? The whole country has been saying it must change. If we say we do not want to change even a comma in this document in this House, what is the leadership doing to the country? We must open up this document and deal with that chapter. Yesterday, a number of us from this House were in a function with doctors and the church. Some of the doctors were very clear that their own hypocritical oath, when they graduate from university ... view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, when we were at the Kenya Institute of Administration, before we stopped abruptly, we came up with over 70 clauses that needed corrections. We even informed the Committee to look at those clauses and amend them appropriately. There were many of them. Representation had problems. We had a number of problems. So, we cannot shy away from that. I want to persuade my colleagues that we must rise up to the occasion and actually ensure that we do what we must do in this House. view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to touch on the area of devolution that was sensationalized yesterday. Devolution and, in particular, regional governments have been part of the three tier devolution since the Bomas days. In Bomas, 14 regions were agreed upon after six months of debate. In the Harmonized Draft, they were reduced to nine. They are not creations, as was said yesterday, of any individual ethnic group or region to suppress others. We must be very honest because whatever we say in this House goes down to the grassroots and we distort information. Some hon. Members mentioned that ... view
• 25 Mar 2010 in National Assembly: Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we need to interrogate this document in an honest way. I want to say that I support devolution, like the hon. Member who has spoken before me. It will be cowardly for us not to devolve and, yet, one of the key issues that we told the country when we were coming up with the Constitution was that we want real power and resource devolution. In the current situation in the proposal that we have, we have gone from the national stage to the counties. If you look at the duties that have been given to ... view