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{
    "id": 1153248,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1153248/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 188,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Mwaura",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13129,
        "legal_name": "Isaac Maigua Mwaura",
        "slug": "isaac-mwaura"
    },
    "content": "I am happy because 70 years is biblical. The late President Kibaki became President at the age of 72 years. Therefore, he has lived his life to the full at the age of almost 91 years, to see the tail-end of the term of his successor, President Uhuru Kenyatta, who also happened to have had the privilege of being his godfather upon his baptism. Madam Deputy Speaker, the late President Mwai Kibaki was a star. The first President, Jomo Kenyatta, must have identified that he had a great future as to occasion a situation where he would be the godfather of his own son. This is a great man from the word go. The late President Kibaki was not a typical politician per se . He borders on the academic because he was plucked from Makerere University. In fact, very interestingly, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga was impressed by the manifesto of the then ruling party under Milton Obote in Uganda. He asked, “you have a very good manifesto”, and he said, “actually, it is not us who did it. It is a young Kenyan in Makerere University who did it.” It happened that Mwai Kibaki is the one who actually made the manifesto of the then ruling party of Milton Obote’s government. That is how the late hon. Jaramogi Oginga invited him to become the executive officer of the then Kenya African National Union (KANU) party. He rose to become an Executive Officer/Permanent Secretary. He is a man who changed with the times. When he could not secure Donholm Constituency, which was Bahati Constituency at that time, he moved to Nyeri and formed his base very well. When he could not take in, he stayed in and waited for the opportune moment to start his Democratic Party (DP). I can imagine the embarrassment he went through when he had to be dropped as a Vice President, and was still retained in the Cabinet as Minister for Health. It must have been a very trying moment. He stayed for 10 good years in the Opposition. I wonder whether he would have become a good President had he not stayed in the Opposition for all those years. It is a question of seasoning, so that by the time he became President, then he knew the suffering of Kenyans. If you live in this bubble of leadership after leadership, you may be bereft of the realities of the people that you would want to lead. He was meant for the moment. I am afraid that under the Jubilee administration, one that I have served and campaigned very seriously for; we have rolled back the economic gains that the late President Mwai Kibaki had made. If we had continued with that legacy, we would be far. However, we have eaten it off. We are currently about 15 years back, where we were before. There is a question of whether devolution and an expanded Government, the two tiers of Government, then it is the reason. I beg to differ. I remember President Kibaki struggling with the new governance led by Alfred Mutua and others, who were then vocal, by him insisting that we are a unitary Government. It is only that in expansionist and via building behaviour of public servants, we did not scale down what had been devolved as to occasion a reduction of Government expenditure at the national level. 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."
}