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{
    "id": 1132676,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1132676/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 134,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Suba South, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Mbadi",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to contribute and register my thanks to the President’s Speech yesterday. We are all aware that this is a requirement of the Constitution. Article 132 of the Constitution is specific and requires the President to once every year, report, in an Address to the Nation, on measures that have been taken and progress made in terms of realising provisions of Article 10 of the Constitution on the principles and values of governance. So, we expected the President to fulfil, as a bare minimum, some elaboration on devolution, national unity, the rule of law and human rights. Besides that, the President is also supposed to submit to Parliament a report on security. How safe we are as a nation. When we weigh in on the President’s Speech, we are supposed to look at the constitutional provisions and ask ourselves whether he met the constitutional threshold of explaining to the nation measures that have been taken towards realisation of these requirements. He also took his time to tell the nation what his Government has achieved in the eight years plus that he has been at the helm of the leadership of this country. I would say that President Uhuru Kenyatta has had two Governments, namely, one which I usually call Jubilee I and then Jubilee II. He elaborated what he has done since he took oath to serve the people of Kenya as the President. In terms of meeting the constitutional threshold, he did well in terms of talking about national unity. That was his opening remarks. He spoke passionately about the need for this country to be together. Even though we compete and sometimes disagree, we must remember that Kenya is bigger than each one of us individually and collectively. This country must be bequeathed to future generations intact. We should leave it without destroying the social fabric of this nation. The President was very clear on that. He also talked passionately about devolution. He even mentioned that his Government has transferred, not just 15 per cent of the national revenue, which is the constitutional minimum, but 32 per cent. Although it is based on historical data, I think it is a step in the right direction. What I picked is that the President was so passionate that we lost an opportunity to allocate more resources to counties through a constitutional amendment, something that would not be changed by any individual. Whether you like the Constitution or not, if we embed the provision that the minimum allocation is 35 per cent, it would have to go to the counties. So, this is an opportunity that we lost as a nation. Those who have been telling us that we do not need a constitutional amendment must reckon with the fact that if we agreed to amend the Constitution to anchor the 35 per cent, then it is the people of Kenya who would have benefitted from additional resources that would have been taken to the grassroots to spur economic growth. For this country to realise meaningful economic growth, we must engineer and spur rural economies. That is where there is potential. The biggest potential in this country in terms of productivity is in rural areas. It is not in the usual traditional urban settings. The urban settings are overstretched. That is why we have slums in our cities, a thing that we must discourage. I totally agree with the President that we missed an opportunity to strengthen devolution through a constitutional amendment. The President took a lot of time talking about terms of his legacy, and we need to listen and understand him. I heard some of my colleagues say that he dwelt a lot on what he has done, which is not a constitutional requirement. But we must understand that probably this is the last The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}