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"id": 110754,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/110754/?format=api",
"text_counter": 444,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Kenneth",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister, Ministry of State for Planning, National Development and Vision 2030",
"speaker": {
"id": 167,
"legal_name": "Peter Kenneth",
"slug": "peter-kenneth"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me an opportunity to say a few words. First of all, let me thank my colleagues who are in the Parliamentary Select Committee and in the Committee of Experts for what I would call a very good job. I appreciate that Constitution-making is not easy and that we will never have a perfect Constitution at any one time. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am worried that after 20 years of seeking for a Constitution and getting to where we have gotten today, chances are that we might not even be able to get that Constitution, because having been at the Kenya Institute of Administration and having listened to hon. Members in this House, we want to amend virtually every section other than the word âKenyaâ on that Constitution. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is very, very critical that we look at the Constitution-making process that has been in this House for the last 20 years. At the time when it started, anybody who was there or who was born at that time is now an adult; he is now a registered voter and is about to take a political decision on this same constitutional process that began 20 years ago. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have talked about an authoritarian presidency. It is important that we also look at its history. In 1964, we moved from a parliamentary system into a republican system without having to undergo an election. Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, who was the Prime Minister, simply moved into the presidency without elections and we did not create institutions under a republican system, but left them as parliamentary systems. Therefore, we never achieved what we wanted to achieve. As a result, we got an authoritarian presidency because we never created the institutions for the presidency. That is what this Constitution is trying to create now. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when you look at the Executive, and we are saying that we want a pure presidential system, it has to be pure! It has to be a direct presidential election; you have to have a powerful Senate and you have to have a House of Representatives. Those are the three institutions that will check each other in a pure presidential system. I hope that my colleagues will not backtrack because they are so used to a parliamentary system where Members of Parliament are appointed as Ministers. That does not take place in a pure presidential system! We must be careful that we are not carried away; that we do not think we can still be Ministers and Assistant Ministers in a pure presidential system. That hybrid is what brought an authoritarian presidency. That hybrid is what has brought us to where we are today; that hybrid is what necessitated calls for constitutional remaking. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, on issues of devolution, we must ask ourselves a very clear question. What are we talking about? Is it devolution of resources or is it devolution of power? If it is both, and I have been told that democracy is very expensive, we must ask ourselves: âDo we have enough resources to finance the devolution of other forms of Government?â In my own experience, looking at the current Budget, the total gross revenues for this country this year is Kshs564 billion. Our total recurrent expenditure is Kshs603 billion, which means that we are even living beyond our means! Let us not just promise things that we will not be able to do from a financial point of view. Can our Government be able today to sustain these systems that I have heard being proposed? If the Central Government has failed because of bureaucracy, what guarantee do we have that the other forms of devolution which will also have governments will not fail because of bureaucracy? Do we want to provide services to our people? Do we want to give our people the basic needs that they require or do we simply want to create forms of governments that will instead take the little money we have to run instead of providing services? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have heard people quoting the devolution system of a country known as âNigeriaâ which is the size of Kenya, Uganda and Malawi put together. It is the third largest producer of oil. So, they have resources. They can afford to have the forms of regions which we cannot say are foolproof, but it is because they have resources. I would have wanted the CoE and the PSC to evaluate the total expenditure that the Government will incur if we were to go with this kind of devolution that is being proposed. It is important that as we look at forms of governance, we realise that what the majority of Kenyans want are basic services at the grassroot level. If you look at this document and the comments most Kenyans gave, you will find that they were giving comments towards resources. They were talking about the inequitable distribution of resources in this country. That is what Kenyans were desperate to sort out. They were desperate to ensure that resources get to them. If we will bring some forms of governments in the manner of putting regions into compartments, I do not think it will be fair to Kenyans. We want to have one country and not compartments of regions in the form of devolution. It has worked in the USA because they have 51 States and they have the largest economy in the world. They have their own ways of dealing with devolution. However, at the end of the day when they stand for elections, they say they are one country and the communities come second. If we want to prosper as a country, we must ensure that we talk about one country and communities later. Let us not devolve by bringing community interests first and leaving the country to bleed. It is very important that we know that we are brought together by a country called âKenyaâ. We must shield and protect our country. We must ensure that Kenya is given prominence, first and foremost. Having said that, I have one or two issues I would like to ask my colleagues. Even as we pass this document which I fully support, there are two issues which I think are critical. I think that this document requires some technical cleaning. The election date being proposed as August may not be feasible in my thinking. This is because if we have signed a Treaty of the East African Community where the Budgets of the respective countries are read in June, I do not see how we will be here waiting for the Budget to be read and yet we have elections in August. One has to give way to the other. Secondly, it is the issue of being pro-life. This is a matter that has come in the Bill of Rights. I know most of us are pro-life. Had our mothers been pro-choice we would not be here today. We would have no guarantee of being here today because they would have chosen to terminate their pregnancy. It is important to know that our mothers and women deserve better handling than having abortion. They would like to have better maternal and reproductive health care to ensure that there do not have to be stages where the word âabortionâ has to arise. Indeed, we cannot constitutionalize the word âabortion.â Finally, I realise that this debate is ending on Thursday next week. I hope that we are not taking Kenyans for a ride. I hope we will not confirm that we are taking Kenyans for granted by concluding the debate on April Fools Day. Thank you."
}