Dr. Oburu Odinga

All parliamentary appearances

Entries 31 to 40 of 1622.

• 11 Jun 2024 in Senate: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. I would like to take this opportunity, just as my colleagues have done, to congratulate the committee, which was negotiating the Division of Revenue between the Equitable Shareable Revenue. They did a good job. However, the job they did as far as I am concerned, is not enough. Mr. Speaker, Sir, when you talk of division of revenue, you should always take into consideration the fact that there is inflation in this country. Therefore, when you are saying that you give counties at least 15 per cent of the total revenue of the last audited ... view
• 29 May 2024 in Senate: Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker. I do not want to take long on this. First, I would like to thank you for giving me this opportunity. I would like to make a few general statements on elections. The electoral process has gone through a very long history in our country. We used to have a system in this country where the President was everything. The President was the one who was budgeting for the Electoral Commission, holding funds for them and choosing the Chair of the Electoral Commission. view
• 29 May 2024 in Senate: It was also the same President who was determining the calendar of elections. Those were very dark days. We used to have a one-party system. This one-party system was torturous to MPs. view
• 29 May 2024 in Senate: I recall one time when I was a councillor during that one-party system in the Kisumu Municipality and there was a Kenya African National Union (KANU) disciplinary committee. This disciplinary committee was very ruthless. If you were charged with any offence of having offended the Government or having done any mistake or disagreeing with the leader, you would be called to appear before that committee in the morning. view
• 29 May 2024 in Senate: If you appeared before that committee in the morning and they found you guilty, they would declare a verdict of guilty on you and take that matter to Parliament the same afternoon. If it came to Parliament, the Speaker would declare your seat vacant because the verdict of that committee meant that that you had been expelled from KANU. view
• 29 May 2024 in Senate: Once you were expelled from KANU which was the only party, you did not have any other chance to go to another party to contest and that would become your end. People used to go before that disciplinary committee and kneel before them pleading with them in order to be exonerated. view
• 29 May 2024 in Senate: Madam Temporary Speaker, if you ever got declared guilty, that was almost the end of your life. It was the end of everything that you had planned for in your life. I recall one very powerful Minister from Western Kenya who appeared before that committee, and he was almost crying. This is because if anything happened, his seat would have been declared vacant. The electoral commission would have declared that seat vacant and announced the date for election. view
• 29 May 2024 in Senate: The date for elections would have been in a month’s time and I can tell you, Madam Temporary Speaker, that within that one month, there would have been another MP here. This is because KANU usually nominated one candidate for those seats and yet it had the discretion of nominating more than one candidate for one seat. However, if they decided to nominate only one candidate, that one candidate would present his papers on the appointed date to the returning officer. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can ... view
• 29 May 2024 in Senate: Madam Temporary Speaker, the returning officer was usually the District Commissioner (DC) and he or she would declare that the seat was won unopposed. Once that was declared, there would be a new MP before the one month expired. That would be the end of you because there was no other party. view
• 29 May 2024 in Senate: Since those days, this country has gone through a revolution through a lot of struggle. People have even shed blood in order to get to where we are. There have been many changes. The new Constitution was godsent because elections dates are no longer managed by the President view