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{
    "id": 1132795,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1132795/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 253,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nyeri Town JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Ngunjiri Wambugu",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13460,
        "legal_name": "Martin Deric Ngunjiri Wambugu",
        "slug": "martin-deric-ngunjiri-wambugu"
    },
    "content": " Thank you very much, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the President’s State of the Nation Address, and to especially support many of the things that he raised. First and foremost, I would like to point out that you have an option in any given circumstance. You can give someone a glass of juice that is three-quarters full and they can decide to focus on the quarter that is not there and complain about that. For those of us in this House, we are all political operatives. We know that politics is not a perfect business. You can never get 100 per cent. In fact, if you get 65 or 70 per cent, you are doing extremely well. Yesterday, we listened to the President as he articulated what his government has done. There is one thing that I feel is very understated. The last time I got a 411 update on the vaccination exercise in the country, I was informed that more than six million Kenyans had been vaccinated. I do not know whether we understand the capacity and cost of vaccinating six million Kenyans at no cost. The Government has been able to do this. People across the country have been able to access Covid-19 vaccines. This is something we are supposed to celebrate and acknowledge as an achievement of this Government. If you look at the President’s State of the Nation Address, you see how he turned a crisis into an opportunity. I come from Nyeri Town Constituency. When the Covid-19 pandemic was at its peak, we had 4,000 young men and women working under the Kazi Mtaani Programme just in that one constituency. This played a major role in keeping the community going and reducing opportunities for misbehaviour among the youth. They were earning some money and were busy. This is something we need to appreciate. It is also important for us to appreciate that we have had an extremely volatile political environment in this country over the last three years. Some sections of the Executive decided that they were not going to work but instead they were going to spend the rest of the period campaigning. They left all the work to the President and part of the Government. Despite this and the fact that we looked like we were running into a campaign at any given time, the President was able to steady the country and keep it going. We have had people shouting politically every weekend but that has not at all affected the social structure of this country. It has not at all affected the economic structure of this country. It has not at all affected how people relate with one another. That is great achievement. I have listened to some of my colleagues complaining about being left out of the handshake. The handshake of 2018 was between protagonists of a political competition. The political competition that happened in 2017 was between two people. I do not understand why some people feel like they were left out. They were not part of that conflict, unless they want to be part of it. In addition, the humility that is required to do what the partners of the handshake did tells us of their commitment to this country’s wellbeing. They were able to come down from their high horses and abandon them. Each of them felt a certain sense of entitlement for their position but 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."
}