Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1245434,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1245434/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 148,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "For those that have been here long enough, the truth of the matter is that as a Member of Parliament or an MCA, you cannot be properly effective beyond two or three committees. That is the reality because of the demands of time and many other things that you have to do as an MP or MCA. That is what we are expecting of our county assemblies and I hope the same can be concluded. Good job, Sen. Ali Roba. That is the proposal that we give to you as Members of the Senate. I can see you have also gone further and tackled a very divisive issue that has been in this Senate for quite a long time; county-specific request. I see a habit and I say this with tremendous respect to my colleagues on the minority and majority side. There is a habit that is creeping into this Senate that was not there before, whereby before voting on a Bill, people ask: “What is in it specifically for my people?” While it is your primary responsibility, that alone cannot be your basis for voting on a particular matter because, in almost all matters that come before this Senate, there will always be gainers on a particular front and losers on a particular front. If you make it your business to just look out for your county, what about the day others will also say that on this one, I am not voting with you because my county is benefiting? The truth of the matter is that there is no time when on your own, you will be able to raise or marshal the 24 delegations. You will always rely on the collective spirit of all the 47 delegations that are in this House. By the way, people like Sen. Wambua and the rest that have served in the Senate long enough will tell you that many of these Divisions are quite blurred within a very short time in the Senate; these ones of majority and minority. Before then people caucus on need basis and many things happen in between. Therefore, I want to encourage colleagues that when a Bill such as this one comes before the House, it is not just enough to say that because--- I say that because I have dealt with county-specific needs specifically Tana River County, Kilifi County, and Kajiado County Assembly; those three counties Assemblies that made specific requests to this House. I am glad that our colleagues have requested it. We have done it before. When we first came to this House, some counties did not have even offices for their governors to meet because previously they were either districts or very small administrative units. This House in its wisdom, because we consider that all the 47 units are important to this country allocated to around four counties among them being Nyandarua and Tharaka Nithi, for them to put up their headquarters and we passed it here without much of the huff. I never heard anybody say that why are you building a county headquarters for Tharaka Nithi yet I do not come from there? That is the kind of spirit and thoughtfulness that I expect of each of us. Finally, it is just a thought that I have shared, and I want to ask Sen Roba and Members of the Committee on Finance and Budget: What are we going to do on this issue of delayed disbursements? We must think through it. We have to give proposals and even radical ideas to the National Treasury because if we expect the National Treasury to sort it on behalf of our county governments, perhaps, they will never do it."
}