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{
    "id": 146947,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/146947/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 266,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ms. A. Abdalla",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 382,
        "legal_name": "Amina Ali Abdalla",
        "slug": "amina-abdalla"
    },
    "content": "Thank you Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to the Budget Speech. First, I would like to congratulate the Minister for Finance for walking the talk. For five years, he was giving us the alternative Budget as the Leader of the Official Opposition. He always said that we should be devolving funds. Now that he was given the opportunity, I am glad he did not act like a regular politician by walking the talk and devolving the funds. The Grand Coalition Government has been described as a Government of technocrats assisted by politicians. Governments are supposed to be governments of politicians assisted by technocrats. The Prime Minister and Minister for Finance has moved the power base from the technocrats deciding how the Budget should look like, allocated and reallocated. The move to devolve funds has its challenges in that people in the Ministry of Roads or the Ministry of Education, for example, had to wait for May to do infrastructure development. They had to sit at a Permanent Secretary’s office to get Kshs200,000 cheque for a primary school. That, however, has been shifted by this Budget. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to congratulate the Minister for taking the bull by the horns and ensuring that through the Budget, he has shifted the focus from the technocrats in the different Ministries, who are the Government unto themselves, to constituencies. Whereas we rejoice that this Budget has drawn some equity and all constituencies will get equal amounts of resources; we must be weary of the challenges ahead. This is a double edged sword. We do not have sufficient capacities in our constituencies to manage some of the programmes. We have to create a better relationship with the technocrats at the grassroots level so that we are able to achieve that. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this is the beginning of us having budgets that are simply rubber stamped by this House. The Fiscal Analysis Bill was passed in this House and as you all know, this is the last Budget whose content we will be hearing about during its reading. The Fiscal Analysis Act is going to allow us to go through these processes where we could do allocations and reallocations. I wish to urge hon. Members to note that our responsibility now could be less criticism and eulogizing or complaining about what the technocrats have put in the Budget and making better contributions to the Budget. On the budget allocated to reforms, I believe that the Kshs2 billion that was mentioned is definitely not sufficient. For us to stir development, we must be able to have a better security system and a better Judicial system. Whereas funding to the Judiciary was increased, that does not solve the problem because the problem in the judiciary and police force is not the money that goes there. It is about the fact that those institutions are dead in terms of the needs that we have as a nation."
}