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"id": 1132677,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1132677/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Suba South, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. John Mbadi",
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"id": 110,
"legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
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"content": "State of the Nation Address President Uhuru Kenyatta will give to the people of Kenya. Therefore, it is in order and appropriate for him to also tell the country loudly, when the whole world is watching, what he has done. It cannot be denied that this Government has performed well in terms of infrastructural development, including roads, railway and port improvement. We would be very mean to President Uhuru Kenyatta, if we said that he has done little. He has done a lot. The only thing Kenyans have been talking about, and that is where I feel a little disappointed in the President’s Speech, is that he should have taken time to talk about the debt level in this country. We did all these infrastructural development, but at a cost. This cost is not just on the present generation. It is going to be on future generations. The infrastructural developments are likely to bring returns going forward. The President should have taken time to say that we have incurred a lot of debt and we are heavily indebted as a country, but based on economic projections, after three, four or five years, this country is going to stabilise and we are likely to harvest returns on our investment. The President missed an opportunity to speak to the people of Kenya who have been complaining about the high debt levels. He should have, with facts and figures, presented to this House that although we are struggling to pay our debts, based on the returns that we are likely to realise in the coming years, we will pay our debts. That is an opportunity the President missed. I was very happy. We have been fed with a lot of propaganda, hearsay and misrepresentation of facts that from 2018 to date, after the ‘handshake’, attention of the Government shifted to some animal called BBI. Personally, I have not seen that animal. I saw a well-crafted proposed Bill which was taken to Kenyans. I saw a million signatures and not animals. I saw it go to counties and they approved it and still did not see animals. It was brought to Parliament and we approved it with overwhelming majority yet we were not animals, but they call it “animal”. The attention has been shifted and the country lost track. What did the President say here? That for the first time in the history of this country, in the Second Quarter of 2021, we registered the highest economic growth ever witnessed comparable to none in the region, of 10.1 per cent. That is courtesy of the handshake, peace and the calm political environment that we are seeing today. Where do the people who tell us that the “handshake” disrupted Government functions and programs get their records from? If Government functions and programs were not running, how can you achieve 10 per cent economic growth? Let us face facts. It is because of the peace that this country has held its ground in terms of economic fundamentals and realised such accelerated economic growth with the COVID-19 Pandemic ravaging the whole world, where the world economies rank. If we did not have peace in this country and COVID-19 Pandemic at the same time, we would have lost the economy of this country. I, therefore, want to speak to those n ay sayers, prophets of doom, people who are interested in their selfish interests to acquire raw power that, please, do not discredit something that has brought peace and stability to this country. If there is a President who has been active physically, inspecting projects since I became an adult in this country, it is Uhuru Kenyatta. The late President Moi was very active, but for different reasons. He was active in playing politics and not in supervising development. President Kibaki could not leave his office and State House. Probably, he did well because he delegated sufficiently. However, President Uhuru is always out there. You will see him in Kawangware, Kibra, Lamu, comes to Kisumu even without giving the local leadership notice, Naivasha and Limuru. He is a very active President. If, without cooperation from our Deputy President, he could do all these things, assuming his Deputy had cooperated and avoided politics for four years and only do so for six months as he wanted, how much could we have achieved as a country? If we can achieve 10.1 percent with an absentee 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."
}