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{
    "id": 1553535,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1553535/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 113,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Molo, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kuria Kimani",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Speaker. At the outset, I thank the Leader of the Minority Party for raising this matter on the Floor of the House. The incident he is speaking about happened in a show on NTV called Fixing the Nation . I congratulate Nation Media Group for that particular discussion. What the show was trying to do was to inform Kenyans about the budget-making process. We start from the Budget Outlook Paper, to the Budget Policy Statement, to the Estimates and to the Finance Bill. My role was civic education to the country, if you followed the entire conversation. It was a whole two-hour discussion. It was a very engaging discussion on how Kenyans need to communicate when those matters come up. The biggest challenge we have in this country, unfortunately, is that even the most educated people that you may think would read and verify statements, do not. Unfortunately, we are reduced to very short clips. That is why TikTok is now the most popular social media platform. The clips are only one, two or three-seconds long. Therefore, the misinformation may come in. Let me inform this House that #RejectFinanceBill2025 has been trending on X for the last three days. It is trending between No.3 and No.8. I wondered: Am I not the Chairman of the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning? I would have seen the Finance Bill that people are talking about. There is all manner of misinformation, including the assertion that there is a tax for new-born children called taifa something. When you follow the comments of some of those people and go through their accounts, you would think they are distinguished scholars. Yet, they are the ones who are spreading the propaganda. I will be the last person to be on defensive on such proposals before they are brought to the Floor of the House. When the proposal is brought, my Committee will influence the final decision on it. Therefore, I am very careful in my communication. It is unfortunate. Some of us have paid the ultimate price of misinformation. I lived away from home for a long time because of fear of attack from members of the public. I lost personal property. Therefore, that misinformation should stop. I do not know what we need to do to avoid misinformation. Unfortunately, people knowingly misinform members of the public on this particular matter. Right now, we are in a broad-based government arrangement and we agree on many things. We do not know how it will be before we go to the next general elections. Even when we are in different political orientations, let us not misinform the public just for political benefits. When we were considering the Finance Bill, 2024, the Minority side said - “reject, do not amend” - even when they knew for sure that some proposals were good. We would debate on media stations and during the break, I would ask the person I was debating with why they were saying things that are not true. They would tell me it was politics. Let us not play politics with misinformation. It can be very dear and hurtful. It can lead to serious destruction that can almost be irredeemable. I thank you, Hon. Speaker."
}