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{
"id": 1153147,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1153147/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
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"speaker": {
"id": 210,
"legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir, for an opportunity to eulogize Kenya’s best President ever. Shakespeare once said that some men are born great, other men acquire greatness and yet others have greatness thrust upon them. President Mwai Kibaki was not born great. He acquired greatness through sheer hard work and a commitment to patriotism for his country. We can say and identify those upon whom greatness has been thrust and how they have been unable to carry the weight of greatness. At the time, President Mwai Kibaki left the presidency and the leadership of this country, he was the longest serving Member of Parliament in the Commonwealth, having served his motherland for 50 illustrious years as an MP. None of us will reach there. When I first came to Parliament, my role models in debate on the Floor of the House, included Mwai Kibaki, Kijana Wamalwa, Martin Shikuku, James Orengo, George Anyona and many others. Of course, you cannot leave out Kennedy Kiliku in Kiswahili and Prof. Rashid Mzee. These were debaters on the Floor of this House that anybody even if you did not agree with them, you could not but admire. During the times when the budgets would be delivered, Hon. Mwai Kibaki would stand on the Floor of the House - and Sen. Poghisio can bear witness to this - and for a full hour, if not two, three hours and that time there was no time limit on debate, he would bisect and dissect the budget from A to Z. If he did not agree with it, he would finish by saying bure kabisa and then walk out to go and have his cup of tea. I do not know of anybody that Mwai Kibaki violently disagreed with, even those that they differed in opinion. I was given the privilege to work with Mwai Kibaki very closely. I was his Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for four and half years. I was then his Foreign Minister and my duty enjoined me to be very close with him in whatever we did particularly in matters foreign. When he came to power in 2002, it is instructive to put on record that as the leader of the NARC Coalition that brought together FORD-K, DP and the then Charity Ngilu’s NAK and then LDP, he chose the leader of our party FORD-K as his Vice President. He was a man whom they walked with across Kenya, they trusted each other and they worked so well together. Unfortunately, my party leader did not live long enough to do what he could have done to change this country. Kenyans will remember Mzee Mwai Kibaki as a man who came to the presidency at a very difficult time. The Kenyan Shilling was at its weakest level; the economy was in tatters as it is today. Many other things had gone wrong. However, when he left the country, we all look back with nostalgia and amazement as to how a man could do so much for a country within such little time. Mr. Speaker, Sir, when the late President Kibaki came to power, within the first three months, those of us who were there like Sen. Poghisio, can say that Kenya was rated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as the happiest country on earth. Kenyans were classified as the most hopeful people in the world because the late Mwai Kibaki arrived with a message of hope. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}