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"id": 196233,
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"speaker_name": "Ms. Karua",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs",
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"legal_name": "Martha Wangari Karua",
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"content": " 656 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES April 23, 2008 Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I rise in support of the Motion. I want to agree with all those who have said that the IDPs needed to have been re-settled yesterday. The issue we are dealing with, about re-settlement, has several phases. There are those evicted from their farms. There are those evicted from their places of work. There are those evicted from businesses. The mode of re-settlement differs. For the people evicted from their properties, there can be no debate about it. The Constitution of this country has not been overthrown. Every Kenyan has a right to life and the right to property. We, therefore, cannot negotiate the right to life and the right to property. We, as leaders, it is incumbent upon us to take up leadership and uphold the right to life right to property of everybody, including our opponents. That is why we are leaders in the National Assembly of Kenya. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to remind my colleagues. I laid Papers on the Table of this House last month. Those Papers included a public statement signed by the Serena group on 1st February, 2008. Just to remind hon. Members, we committed all of you - the 210 of us - to the immediate re-settlement of IDPs. We reminded and re-committed ourselves to upholding the constitutional rights of everybody in this country. We also acknowledged that there are underlying problems which we need to tackle. We, therefore, agreed to establish a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission. We are in the process of finalising the law. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we will bring it to this august House so that it may be set up. But let us be very clear about the sequence. We have never agreed that we shall hold the resettlement of IDPs until the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) is formed. That is to tackle the problems that we are all talking about. We acknowledge they are there. Resettlement must go on. Tackling the underlying causes must go on! Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, if we are talking of preparing the ground, we are late, as leaders. Ever since 1st February, 2008, and those agreements have been put in the newspapers for everybody to see, both ourselves and our constituents should have started to get ready. We have heard that the problems were spontaneous. Let hon. Members not bear the guilt of the real culprits; those who may have fanned the problem. Let us leave that to investigations. Let us undertake to do what we can. We have a responsibility to take away the perception that communities are at war. There are no communities at war! It is leaders who disagree. How come we are not fighting in this House and we come from all ethnic groups in this country? If there were ethnic problems between communities, we should be the first to fight. We must not make the poor people fight each other in our constituencies or anywhere in Kenya. Yes, the land problem is a bother to Kenya and to all African countries that underwent colonialism. We failed to tackle the land issues at Independence, when we entrenched in the Constitution the rights of the land grabbers who came to colonise us and take away our land. They made us push one another in little enclaves. We will have to do that through constitutional review, so that we can have a programme that does not make Kenyans squatters in their own country. You realise that there is no rich man or woman who is an IDP and yet, they are the ones with tens of thousands of acres from all communities. They are not from one community. None of them is an IDP even in that Rift Valley. It is the poor people who have been made to fight each other and we, Parliamentarians, who do not go under the name poor, are not fighting each other and yet, by acts or omissions, we are encouraging our people to fight. We really must rise above that and encourage people to live in harmony with one another. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to say this: There are complaints about arrests. That is not just in the Rift Valley! In the Mt. Kenya area and parts of Rift Valley, communities are complaining that their male children are being picked as adherents of Mungiki even when they are April 23, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 657 not and yet, we have to let the law take its course. In the Rift Valley, I am now hearing complaints that certain people have been arrested when they have not done anything wrong. We are a country under the rule of law. We again signed an agreement at Serena that we commit ourselves to the rule of law. We committed you, dear hon. Members. We, therefore, have to let the due process take its course wherever you are from - the whole country. But I want to agree with my good Mr. Koech that due process must be speeded up so that the cops are able to release those who are innocent, and the culprits are prosecuted under the rule of law. I also want hon. Members to know that for petty offences, the law allows people to reconcile. But for gross violations of human rights, both our law and the international law does not allow compromise. We must tell our constituents and remind ourselves, loud and clear, that crime does not pay. Even when we have disputes, we have to settle them under the rule of law, so that we can live together in harmony. Let us find ways of bringing Kenya together. We should not have debates that polarise us between one group and another. Let us have debates that promote our unity as a country. Finally, by going to the Rift Valley and other spots, the Head of State and the Right Honourable Prime Minister are not ignoring hon. Members. That is why they called them to tell them. They are only beginning the process of dialogue. Dialogue is not a one-off. It is a process!"
}