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{
    "id": 1153150,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1153150/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 90,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, President Jakaya Kikwete came here and in 24 hours, we were able to narrow the gap and agree to agree. We had an agreement signed, came to Parliament, altered the Constitution, created the position of the Prime Minister and had the Grand Coalition Government. In fact, some of my colleagues like our team leader, Hon. Martha Karua, did not agree with what we did. She even boycotted the signing of that agreement. At the end of the day, we look back and say that hardliners were wrong, but His Excellency the late Mwai Kibaki was right because we brought peace to our country, which rediscovered its trail and moved on. Mr. Speaker Sir, H.E the Late President Mwai Kibaki respected everybody who worked with him. As Sen. Orengo has been saying here about forced marriage, when you have a forced marriage and it does not work, you end up with what I told you here in the Senate, a messy and noisy divorce. You can see that noisy and messy divorces are happening because people have to respect each other even if you do not agree. Today we look back to what Mzee Kibaki did for this country. He left Kenya when a bag of fertilizer was Kshs1,800. People like Sen. Poghisio here are farmers where they come from. Today a bag of fertilizer is Kshs6,800. That is what President Kibaki left us. For the ten years that Kibaki was our president, even during the troubles of 2007- 2008, there were no petrol queues in this country. We never saw them. Today as we pride into mega projects people are queuing for food and going hungry. They are queuing for food and petrol; farmers cannot afford inputs; the cost of fertilizer and seed is unreachable. Everybody in Kenya is living on tenterhooks. We remember Mzee Kibaki; that he that never left our country in a situation where Kenyans started regretting being Kenyans. He made everybody proud. He made all of us look back and say this is our country. It was truly the giant in the region. Mr. Speaker, Sir, when we had a problem with Migingo Island, when Uganda was claiming it, we said that it was our Island. Many people started issuing very bellicose and belligerent statements that we go to war and fight. Mzee Kibaki just laughed and said that Kenya and Uganda have so much in common to fight over an island. He called President Museveni to come to Kenya. They sat and instructed us to put together a team from Uganda and Kenya and resurvey the international boundary between Kenya and Uganda starting from Kibish in the north, down to the T-junction of Kenya-Tanzania-Uganda boundary. In fact, it is then that we found where Sen. Poghisio comes from. The international boundary beacons had been uprooted. We had to put them back without quarreling, fighting or doing anything. That is Kibaki for you. A man who believed in peace and tranquility of this region. As I eulogise President Kibaki, I also want to remember my brother Hon. Kalonzo Musyoka who was President Kibaki’s Vice-President for a full term. Brother Kalonzo did us proud because we worked together. I was his Assistant Minister in the first term of Kibaki and in the second, I was a Minister and he was the Vice-President. We deed a sterling job. We had no backstabbing or endless gossip. We had no situation where anybody looked down upon the other in whatever circumstances we found ourselves. 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."
}