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"id": 188067,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Mungatana",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Medical Services",
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"id": 185,
"legal_name": "Danson Buya Mungatana",
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"content": " Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me take this opportunity to congratulate the Minister for Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs for bringing this Bill to this House for discussion. The Memorandum of Objects and Reasons gives us the reasons for this Bill. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker. Sir, one of the things the Minister said while moving this Bill, and I was listening very carefully, is that it is supposed to be a Bill that promotes peace, justice, national unity, healing and reconciliation amongst the people of Kenya. Peace and justice are essential commodities for the peaceful existence of this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the healing bit of this is national unity and reconciliation. That was contained in the first three lines of the actual reason for the existence of this Bill in this House. So, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the thrust of all the provisions and in exercise of all the powers, this Bill should be focused. It should not be punitive. It should not be a Bill that punishes. It should not be a Bill that creates acrimony. All the provisions and the thrust of everything that we are going to do under this Bill should be toward promoting peace and national reconciliation. But, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I believe that one of the things that we have to be extremely careful about in terms of who sits as commissioners in this Bill is that, the criteria for selection or for putting people who are going to act as commissioners should be very, very heavily biased towards people that we believe will further the objects and the real reasons for the creation of this Bill and the law that we want to pass in this Parliament. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am laying the foundation or trying to initiate a movement of thinking away from the ordinary in terms of selecting the panels that will exist for that purpose. Why I am saying that is because I am particularly focusing on the proposed Clause 9 of this Bill. If you look at that Clause, I would be much more comforted if the thinking and the selection criteria of the people who are going to man that Commission will be biased and based upon people that the Kenyan public can trust with the promotion of the memorandum that the Minister mentioned when she was moving this Bill. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we must select a very serious criteria. They must be kind of people that when they stand up to speak, we will feel there is peace. We will feel that there will be justice. We will feel that they will promote national unity. They will promote healing. They will promote reconciliation amongst the people of Kenya! They should not necessarily be professionals from professional bodies. They should not necessarily be people who from the ordinary \"run of the mill\" kind of organizations, no matter how professional or dignified they are. But the kind of professional bodies that we have put in Clause 9 is the same that we put in so many other Bills that we have passed in this Parliament! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to challenge the Minister, this House and even the Departmental Committee on Administration of Justice and Legal Affairs - where this Bill will be taken - to be a bit more creative. The section that we have put here could have been replicated from many of the other Bills that we have passed in this House. In my five years in the last Parliament and in this one, it is the same thing. People say one person should be nominated from the Law Society of Kenya. One person should be nominated from the Federation of the Kenya Women Lawyers--- There is a mistake in Clause (h) where it states:- \"(h) One person nominated by the Kenya Medical Association.\" We have repeated that mistake several times! I would, particularly, want to correct that one 2126 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 24, 2008 and say that the Kenya Medical Association (KMA) is not the association of doctors. The doctors are controlled and regulated by the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board. So, if there is any person who should be nominating, it should be that one and not KMA! Are we going to say that any doctor or any member of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board who is nominated to the panel will become a member? No! Are we going to say that any lawyer who is nominated by the Law Society of Kenya should be a member? Are we going to say that anybody who is nominated by the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) or the Kenya National Union of Teachers should be a member? Are we going to say that any person who comes from these organisations shall be allowed to sit in that panel? Are we going to say that only one person should be nominated by the Association of Professional Societies of East Africa? No! The Minister, in her own words, said that this Bill is intended to promote peace, justice, national unity, healing and reconciliation among the people of Kenya. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we need to create criteria of nominating members from these professional organizations. If we are going to nominate any person whether a doctor or a teacher, we have to take into consideration their credentials. I am an officer of the court. Although, I am a Member of Parliament here, I practise in those courts. There are a lot of belligerent lawyers out there who do not promote peace but they are very senior in their profession. They could very well influence their way into being nominated into this panel. They are other lawyers who are so well politically connected that they could very well influence their ways to be appointed through the Law Society of Kenya as the people who will seat in this Commission. There could be very popular lawyers who could become members or even be elected the Chair of the Council. But are those people promoting, peace, justice, national unity, healing and the reconciliation that this country needs? I do not agree with these provisions. We need to think afresh even about the representatives of the churches who are provided for in the Bill. The Bills says: \"The Minister shall constitute a selection panel consisting of these people\" Some of these people are openly belligerent. We have seen members of various sects fighting within the same church and yet they could be very senior people. This has been covered by the Press. So, I propose that we should come up with a very clear category. We must have proof for any person who is going to be nominated from any KMA or any other association to sit in this panel. It should be proven from those nominating bodies that this person has promoted these kind of objectives even in his profession before nominating them. They should not pick the bosses of those professions or churches to come and sit in the Commission. We have seen it. Every Commission we have formed, every law where people say, for example, COTU is supposed to nominate one person to the Commission, it is the bosses who come. If is not the Secretary General or the Deputy Secretary. If it is not the Deputy Secretary General, it is somebody in the management. For this particular law, we must be very clear so that we do our best to establish a criteria which is humanly possible. We should do our best so that we can have the best people who would have a record of promoting peace, justice, national unity, healing and reconciliation among the people of this country. For example, there are lawyers who have been known to run Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) which preached peace in this country. There are other people, for example, priests or clergy who have been extremely active in seeking peace, especially when we had the problem of post-election violence. We know clergy that moved across the country and clearly set up a record of sorts in preaching peace. I remember seeing this on television. Those were very difficult moments. There were people who were standing out there and saying, \"we are brothers and sisters.\" Those are kinds of people that we would want to see. This criteria must come. Somebody must show that apart from just being a member or one person nominated by the Kenya Private Alliance and Federation of Kenya Employers--- That person was also there. We saw some of them. Very good people in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps preaching peace and doing good for July 24, 2008 PARLIMENTARY DEBATES 2127 this country. This is the kind of criteria that we want to see. For example, if it is just a guy who is a boss in the Federation of Kenya Employers, but he never even visited an IDP camp or appeared anywhere near those camps, such person should not be nominated to this Commission. In fact, when some of them heard that there was violence, they took off. If the same person comes and is nominated, because he is such a powerful person, I do not think we will be doing justice to this Commission. There has got to be a very clear category. We want people who have a heart for this thing to sit on this council. I am emphasising this again, because the kind of commissioners that we will appoint will form the character of this Commission. They will also form the kind of results that we will get. They will also create the confidence amongst the people of this country. I do not see a representation in the NGO world here. But there was a very strong NGO which was on television all the time speaking about peace. Even we, the legislators, are not provided for in this Bill. Why are we not provided for? I remember some legislators who went out and laid flowers for peace at Uhuru Park. There were legislators who were consistently preaching peace. Let the people who will sit on this Commission be people who come with credentials that even Kenyans themselves can recognise. It should not just be some professional bodies and big bosses who are coming to sit in this Commission. For example, in South Africa, the chair of the commission that was there, Rev. Desmond Tutu, came into that commission with such credentials that by the time he was named the Chair everybody was saying, \"something good is going to happen.\" By the way, he was even a Nobel Laureate by the time he sat on that Commission, having won a prize for peace. That was excellent selection."
}