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{
    "id": 106284,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/106284/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 315,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Foreign Affairs",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, it did not have to take hon. Affey to scan through the Statute books and identify this as a bad law and bring it to this House. It is the duty of the Law Reform Commission to scan through our laws and weed out the wheat from the chaff. It should advise Parliament, the line Ministries and Attorney-General that we do not need this law in our statute books today. That is the duty we have given them and we vote money for them. I want to urge them and the line Minister – I wish he was here to listen to what hon. Members are saying – to advise the Law Reform Commission that its principal duty is to reform existing laws. Reform includes repealing them. When you have a law that turns a section of the country into what looks like a permanent state of emergency, where you exclude a section of the country--- It is history now because the period over which it operated is over, but we also know that in enforcement of injustices committed through criminal acts, courts will be liberal enough to allow the expansion of time to file suits for compensation. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I think the repeal of this law must also open ways, one, for public servants who committed criminal acts to be individually held accountable if they are still living. This is because there are some public servants who, under the guise of executing orders from above, have committed a lot of atrocities on our people when nobody has ordered them from “above.” So, when this law is repealed, one would expect that we need to look at those who suffered the injustices. We have got the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC). Common and conventional wisdom has it that the beginning of healing lies in the acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Unless you acknowledge that you are wrong, how do you get forgiven or healed? I think that we, as a country, as a we move to the future, if we do not want to carry excess historical baggage that will become a nuisance to this country tomorrow, the time is now to repeal such colonistic laws. But more importantly, I would want to see, one of these days, a great Kenyan who presided over a mischief and brutality of the type that we have seen walk briskly and talk to the public and say: “My fellow Kenyans, I am sorry.” The gates of heaven will be opened for such a man or woman, than people who live a lie and pretend that they are what they are not. We have people out there on the streets who were in this Parliament when this law was passed and they said nothing. Today, when they speak, you would think that they are an infusion of Mohammed and Jesus dropped on earth to save our country, yet they were here when the law was passed. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I hope that Parliament will support this Bill. I salute hon. Affey for bringing it. It will bring a new dawn to the people of North Eastern, Isiolo, Marsabit, Tana"
}