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{
"id": 1499742,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1499742/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "The question is: Is this the right way to respond to this problem that we are facing in the country? This is what I want to appeal to the Senate Majority Leader. It is not the right way to respond to this problem because he is trying to legislate bad behaviour. Madam Temporary Speaker, you cannot legislate politician’s bad behaviour of using the fundraising platform to control, rule, disrespect and take advantage of the people. This Bill is basically indicting the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC). We established a constitutionally allowed institution to deal with the misbehaviours of public officers and state officers under EACC. This Bill basically tells us that the EACC has completely failed in doing its work. Instead of sponsoring this Bill, I want to encourage the Senate Majority Leader that, together we can work on rethinking the EACC in terms of the way it can deal with matters of Chapter 6 of the constitution, because that is where the rot is coming from. You cannot legislate fundraising in the country because Kenyans come from communities. From the family, to the community, tribe, county and to the nation, we know what fundraising goes to do. Madam Temporary Speaker, for the purpose of this conversation, I would like to enumerate them. We have four fundamental areas where our people find themselves in situations that they did not wish to find themselves in, where they are forced to fundraise for. The first one is education. There are schools in Nyatike Sub-County, Masangora in Kuria West Sub-County, Kuria East, there are schools in Rongo, where I come from, that children sit under the parents’ table to be learn and when they go to school, they sit under the tree to be educated. What is wrong when that community comes together as a community, in the event that the Government has not built a school there to build those schools? What is the problem with that? Are you telling me that if people do not come from well-to-do families, they cannot reach out to their neighbours who are well-off to help them build those schools? All the schools in this country have been built as a function of fundraising. We cannot kill that. Still on the issue of education, the other problem is that of school fee. I assure you that, that 70 per cent of the young people who have passed primary school, cannot afford to go to school despite the fact that we have NG-CDF to supplement their school fee. Madam Temporary Speaker, I take this time to share my story with you and I am not doing this for the sake of gimmicks. In the year 2005, having been adopted by a Kikuyu family in 2004 and lived with eight families, I was meant to join Friends School Kamusinga in 2006, since I did my exams in 2005. Since I could not afford school fees, remember, the former President, Hon. Kibaki, had tried to do what we are doing now, by Executive power. President Kibaki had put an Executive Order that banned public solicitation of funds in 2003 and 2004. When I passed to go to Friends School Kamusinga, I did not have money. However, the issue of fundraising had been banned by the Kibaki administration. It meant that I had to go to the District Commissioner (DC) to get a proforma to raise money. For three months, I could not get the DC to write for me a proforma to solicit funds. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1499743,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1499743/?format=api",
"text_counter": 200,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, when I eventually got the proforma, I was only able to raise Kshs800 after three months. I missed the first term because I could not raise money and I could not get through to the District Commissioner’s (DC) office. I joined the Friends School Kamusinga in second term when all my peers had gone through first term. Even then, it was through that act of having a proforma that I met one gentleman, Kennedy Okong’o, a lawyer in town, who wrote for me a cheque that enabled me go to school and become a Senator today in this House. Then today you are saying that for children like me who might not have been aggressive enough to get to a DC have to now go to a Cabinet Secretary or a CECM in the county to get a fundraising document in order to go and raise money. Where are we going as a country? Secondly, the area that people are facing a lot of problems in is in the medical issues. It might look simple for people here who have medical cover to think that medical issues in this country are easy. However, we have people in this country who are held as prisoners of hospitals because they cannot pay Kshs30,000 to get out of hospital. So, the moment you say that for them to raise money and leave hospitals or get medical attention, they should look for a CECM, form a committee and look for people who are well off, what shall we be doing to our country? Let us legislate the bad manners of politicians and let the EACC do its job. Madam Temporary Speaker, we also have another area that people do not understand - the burden of funerals in this country. As a political class, that is another area I have gotten many requests from. Someone has suffered and died in a hospital. Then they get imprisoned in mortuary and yet they are dead because their families cannot afford a fee of Kshs30,000 or Kshs10,000. Sometimes it is as little as Kshs5,000, but a family cannot get their person out of a mortuary. What is wrong with that person reaching out to a neighbour or to me who is a little bit privileged to help out and lend a hand to get this person out of a mortuary? These are real issues. They are not stories and they are in our communities. I know that the bone of contention that has been there is the issue of church and mosques. The political class have used pulpits and mosques to do political campaigns and make it difficult for the nourishment of our people in terms of spirituality. I do not support the idea that we should ban fundraising for churches or mosques. This is because the role that mosques and churches play in terms of the moral compass of our community, their value might not be quantifiable, but it is untold especially on the impact they have on our community. Let the churches self-regulate with regard to controlling the bad manners of a few politicians. It is not all of them, but a few politicians who have the bad manners of using those platforms for bravado and ego-setting for their political nourishment instead of their spiritual nourishment. Madam Temporary Speaker, we cannot ban the political class, the public officer, the state officer, the private individual or the corporate individual from raising money to grow churches, mosques and houses of worship; when these places help to contribute in supplementing the government's effort in building our moral capacity in this country. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1499744,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1499744/?format=api",
"text_counter": 201,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "If you want to build a strong home, you must constantly build three things in a human being. That is why, even in the creation, there is Holy Trinity. That is why we were created in threes. The first thing you must feed in a human being is the mind. That is why we have got an education system. Once you have fed the mind of a human being, there is still no peace if you do not feed the heart of a human being. That is where the churches and the mosques come in. A peaceful heart with an educated mind is never peaceful unless you also feed the stomach of this human being. That is when you get a complete human being. Madam Temporary Speaker, any moment you take away any of those segments in the society, you cannot make it. We, as a Government, and as a political class can only feed the stomach. Educational institutions can only feed the brain. Where do we leave the hearts of our people? It is to the churches and the mosques and we cannot allow any law that makes it impossible to build those churches and mosques. In this Bill, we have also seen a provision that says if you want to do fundraising, you must first do it in your family. I come from a family where the first name that has been heard in this country in our family and in the entire generation and which Aaron Cheruiyot knows is Eddie Oketch. This is because my grandfather, Kawisa died a long time ago in some village in Nyakune, near the Gogo Falls that nobody knows. This means that it has an impact on the well-being of my entire community and family. Madam Temporary Speaker, you are putting me in a position where if I want to fundraise, I can only do it with my family and not with the family of Mungatana, whom I now know and I can invite to support me here and there. This is discriminatory and making people to be in their own cocoons of successful families, the haves versus have- nots. We cannot allow that in our country. Lastly, there is the issue of regulators. You are talking about regulations being done by cabinet secretaries. In law it looks easy, but in practice, how will this cabinet secretary regulate the President and make sure that the President abides by the requirements of this law? It is not possible. The President cannot be regulated by a person he supervises and he is his boss. Madam Temporary Speaker, this Bill says that at the county level, the CECM in charge of planning and social development will regulate fundraising. How will this person regulate the governor and yet our governors have so much ego that you cannot even tell them something in a funeral or in a function? It will mean that some political class will have more power to take advantage of fundraising further than the other political class that do not have that power. Madam Temporay Speaker, it will be a business for the higher political class to do what they want with fundraising and leave those people who are ‘smaller.’ In fact, you are giving the most powerful political people a tool to harass their opponents and other people with this Bill. This is a good and a well-intended Bill to cure the problems of our leadership under Article 17 of the Constitution, but it is not a solution. It is legislating the behaviour of bad politics and the bad manners of politicians that cannot be cured by this Bill. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1499745,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1499745/?format=api",
"text_counter": 202,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, let us sit as a House and come up with a legislation that will help us rethink the entire EACC and make sure that it does its job or disband it and come with a more functional anti-corruption institution that can deal with corrupt leaders. With that, I reject this Bill in its entirety. I thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker."
},
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"id": 1499746,
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"text_counter": 203,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Veronica Maina",
"speaker_title": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Thank you, hon. Eddy. Sen. Abass Sheikh Mohamed."
},
{
"id": 1499747,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1499747/?format=api",
"text_counter": 204,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Abass",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13587,
"legal_name": "Abass Sheikh Mohamed",
"slug": "abass-sheikh"
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"content": "Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker. I also join my colleagues in saying that this Bill will not help any Kenyan. The spirit of harambee has been the fundamental cornerstone for this country with regard to development. It is only after the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) and the other funds came in when the country’s economy improved that people want to change the spirit of brotherhood. Harambees or fundraisers have created cohesion in this country. Most of the poor people came up and most of the students today as well as many of our professionals went for scholarships outside the country through harambees. Fundraisers and harambees have created love among the communities. It is only through sharing with the poor that we love one another. Madam Temporary Speaker, today, we cannot throw away the brotherhood that harambees have created. Almost 70 percent of people in this country are below the poverty line. They cannot even afford two meals in a day or pay school fees."
},
{
"id": 1499748,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1499748/?format=api",
"text_counter": 205,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Abass",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13587,
"legal_name": "Abass Sheikh Mohamed",
"slug": "abass-sheikh"
},
"content": "Initially, the Government said there was free education. However, we are not seeing any free education today. Even the primary schools, children have been told to go and bring money. Mothers cannot even afford it. They sell chickens and all these things."
},
{
"id": 1499749,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1499749/?format=api",
"text_counter": 206,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Abass",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13587,
"legal_name": "Abass Sheikh Mohamed",
"slug": "abass-sheikh"
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"content": "I started working with the Government way back in the 1980s. By the time I started the job, the harambee was actually at its peak. There was no school infrastructure. Children were learning under trees. At times, the chiefs used to collect animals or money from within the villages. Sometimes they were using excessive force."
},
{
"id": 1499750,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1499750/?format=api",
"text_counter": 207,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Abass",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13587,
"legal_name": "Abass Sheikh Mohamed",
"slug": "abass-sheikh"
},
"content": "There was a bit of corruption. The classroom that I went to in class one, was built with harambee. Therefore, I cannot support and say that harambee should be stopped or should be monitored. That cannot work for us."
},
{
"id": 1499751,
"url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1499751/?format=api",
"text_counter": 208,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Abass",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13587,
"legal_name": "Abass Sheikh Mohamed",
"slug": "abass-sheikh"
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"content": "Through fundraising, many Kenyans have sought medical treatment outside this country. There are many medical conditions these days. Many people are sick. Medical services and hospitals have been so commercialised. If somebody stays in an ICU or HDU for about three nights, the cost becomes unbelievably high."
}
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