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"id": 1085986,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1085986/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Igembe North, JP",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Maoka Maore",
"speaker": {
"id": 13344,
"legal_name": "Richard Maore Maoka",
"slug": "richard-maore-maoka"
},
"content": "complaining that we are having many retired people in their 60s. This one, we will need some young people. Hon. Deputy Speaker, it is not that there is no room for the youth in diplomacy. There is a lot of room in diplomacy. However, when appointing an accredited ambassador, very few countries will take those who are under 40 years. Many of them decline. For that reason, when you find mature people... I think that is a better word to use. When you find mature people being picked, that is a plus because you are not going to have to explain why you are having someone young. When he or she goes there, you will have issues with them clubbing and other issues related with youth in digression. Therefore, it is good that we have a Bill defining who we are going to send out there as our diplomats. Moreover, we need to understand the diplomat is not just the ambassador, but it is the entire staff. Whether it is the immigration officer you have sent there, the trade attaché, agricultural attaché or even a cultural attaché, they will be representing this country. For instance, when they want to send their spies, you will hear many countries calling them cultural attaché. Therefore, when you hear cultural, you do not even associate that person with having a bigger role or assignment than the ambassador. However, that is how countries operate. When we get into this, there are times when even our ambassadors have failed us. I am an example myself in the year 2000 when a young man was caught up in the miraa business in Tanzania. He was picked and sentenced to life imprisonment. Therefore, the only issue that came up there was that of negotiation. You have to negotiate and get out of the mess that the man found himself in. In November 2000, the East African Heads of State were signing a protocol. Therefore, when they were having a small briefing in the morning, the President was being told: “Your Excellency, there is a young man here who has been caught up in this maneno ya miraa. Therefore, the only thing was that the President only threw his hand to tell that Ambassador: “You can get lost!” Now, luckily, in the same year on the first week of September 2000, I happened to meet the then Minister for Foreign Affairs in a Durban Conference and we had shared a table for a week. Therefore, in that week, I took my time to explain my predicament and when we came back - by then it was His Excellency Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete - I managed. Three weeks later, after the Late President Moi had told off the Ambassador, we managed to get the young man out of Tanzanian jail. This is how even citizens can participate in diplomacy, but which is crude. It is not refined. However, we need a refined way. This is such that even when you have Members of Parliament, you can have them participate in claiming in diplomacy. This is because you will find many of these trips that Members of Parliament take abroad; there are incidences where some of them have really transgressed. It is not out of their wish. It is because they are not aware that when you are at the rank of a Member of Parliament, or a certain civil service, you are a top diplomat in your own way. For that reason, that this is the right time. It has taken long, unfortunately. However, this is the time when we have this Bill which has come up and we ask Members to support it so that we can move forward as a modern country. We can move forward in this area of diplomacy and also we can stamp our authority even in training diplomats from the rest of the East African region. This is because it may not be exclusively for us. Therefore, Hon. Deputy Speaker, with those few remarks, I support."
}