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{
    "id": 1462271,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1462271/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 119,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sifuna",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13599,
        "legal_name": "Sifuna Edwin Watenya",
        "slug": "sifuna-edwin-watenya"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, in that very same breadth, allow me to support the Statement issued by Sen. Cherarkey. In my other capacity, I am the Secretary General (SG) of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), a party that has suffered the brunt of some of the things that Sen. Cherarkey is referring to. There was a public confession one time by the former Senator for Nairobi, hon. Mike Sonko, on what they used to do in order to paint the ODM party as a violent party, whenever we would want to exercise our rights under Article 37. He revealed this culture of people hiring goons in order to disrupt peaceful protests or even to paint the peaceful protests as anything other than peaceful. I was very alarmed to see those scenes in Kapsabet. I saw the same scenes in Kakamega and here in Nairobi. This is very worrying. I do not understand why you need to interfere with anyone’s peaceful protests. There are seven days in a week. If Sifuna wants to protest on Monday, you can pick Tuesday to be against or show support for what I stand for. What is even more worrying is that this happens in the full glare of the police and the security forces in this country. It is very disturbing that if the Constitution requires anyone proceeding on a street or in a public space should be unarmed, then how can the police look at a group of people openly armed with rungus, clubs and other weapons, walking around in order to scare other people from exercising their rights under Article 37? Mr. Speaker, Sir, we must condemn this and I am happy that even Sen. Cherarkey has gotten to a place where he can agree with the SG of ODM that this is not right and it needs to stop."
}