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{
    "id": 124577,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/124577/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 420,
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    "content": "Permanent Secretaries and their Ministers are not in agreement and where their engagements are not clear. You have also witnessed in this House when I rose to disagree with my colleague in the Ministry because of a very critical issue affecting the department of sports. These are incidents that can easily be avoided if the political interests are reduced and we harvest talent externally. If you go to Harvard University, a head of a certain department is a Kenyan. If you go to the State University of New York at Buffalo, the head of law department is another Kenyan. Just the other year, the head of the engineering department at the University of Oxford was a Kenyan. If you go to the State University of California at Berkeley, the Head of the Literature Department is Prof. Mbugua Thiong’o. If you go to Syracuse University, you will find Kenyans. Kenya is replete with talents. We are endowed with professional skills. It is only by way of engaging these professionals as Executive Heads of Ministries that we will terminate the inertia and misappropriation of resources pursuing today by having ethnic barons and their hostages, surrogates and puppets pushed into Cabinet in order to appease those narrow ethnic interests and to broaden somebody’s territory. If today, we had the scenario as stated by this rational Bill, I am sure, His Excellency the President would be the first to put a pen and create a reduction of the size of the Cabinet. I am also confident that the Prime Minister would move boldly and create a scenario where he does not continue being a hostage of interests that threaten to reduce his numbers in this House. I want to conclude by urging my colleagues, let us remain united on national causes. Let us not be like Esau and Jacob in the Bible, and the mother torn between. Let us not behave like Lenana against ole Ntau for Maasailand in the colonial era. Let us not engage in the Russian behaviour of times gone, to demarcate and part with their territory for transient interests which decades later, would be proved to be a loss to that country. It is important that we seek to refresh public policy enunciation, public policy implementation and public policy development. That cannot be realised if we support Bills like this. It can only be realized if we, as Members of Parliament, refuse to be extensions of surrogates of one or two who may influence our regions. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are called upon by the young generation--- The critical mass that we have been warned of as Members of Parliament by my Ministry. Those who constitute 70 per cent of the population and who are less than 30 years of age. The children in primary schools. The children you see coming to visit Parliament. The children who are watching you. The children who are studying civics will interrogate and ask what you did when the time comes. When I was in Standard Two, I knew every Minister of Government by name. I knew who the Minister for Education or the Minister for Water Development was. I can recite that Cabinet. I used to read newspapers from my late father when I was in Standard Two. Today, even Ministers sitting with me on this side of the House are unable to recognize their colleagues in the Cabinet. Just the other week as we were debating the Mau Report, one of the many affected Ministers was asking me the names of Assistant Ministers seated on the other side. Is that not exemplification of confusion? Is it not a fact that we are losing focus. With those very many remarks, I beg to support."
}