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"id": 197054,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. M. Kilonzo",
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"legal_name": "Mutula Kilonzo",
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"content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I thank you for casting your eye on me. First of all, I want to acknowledge that, like my colleagues, I have received an invitation for a seminar on Thursday. I want to thank you very much for this organisation of this seminar for Members of Parliament, so that we can go and continue to bond together. My only regret is that, in the programme, no item has been put there for a briefing of this honourable House by the negotiating team, so that Members of Parliament can come to terms with the legislative instruments expected to come out of this House in the next eight weeks or maybe even sooner. This is because as my colleague, hon. Martha Karua, pointed out, the agreements that have been tabled in this House generated by our negotiating team are agreements that expect and must produce legislative instruments for the greater peace and stability of our country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to take this opportunity, because nobody else has mentioned it, to pay special tribute to hon. Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, the Vice-President and hon. Musalia Mudavadi because both of them were appointed during an acrimonious time to head committees on national dialogue and reconciliation. More often than not, the country seems to forget that even in negotiating, we were going back from Serena to go and report to our chairs, hon. March 25, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 405 Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, Vice-President, together with his committee and I believe hon. Musalia Mudavadi was also getting the same reports although he was on the table. These gentlemen of this country have contributed a great deal to the peace that we have. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this brings me to the next subject. It is very important that as we adjourn this House for two weeks, all of us bear in mind that for the first time in the country's history we have Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who are looking up to us as legislators to ensure that we come up with the right policies not to mention also with legislation to make sure that never again will we have IDPs, but above all, to make sure that we do not pay lip service to resettlement of these people. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I do not think it is fair to tell somebody who is in a police station or living in a camp and who does not have running water and whose children are not going to school to go back to his house and farm when they were all burnt and all his furniture was burnt and when he does not even have fare to go back to the place where he was displaced from. It behooves on this House to keep this in mind. When coming back, kindly support the legislative instruments, including a new Constitution that must be tabled in this House within the next one year or preferably 13 weeks as His Excellency the President was saying, maybe even sooner even if we leave it to my learned friend, Mr. James Orengo. The fact of the matter is that we have an agenda that is phenomenal and that must bring to bear the enormous experience, intelligence, ability and skills that are in this Chamber, so that, for the first time, we produce the sort of country that God intended for us. I have no doubt in my mind that when God created Kenya with the mountains, hills, seas, rivers and the hon. Wetangula who was my pupil and so on, I think he intended for us to live together. Otherwise, I do not see why he did not arrange for me to be born in Arusha or one of us to be born in Uganda and so on. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would be right there in the forefront suggesting to this House when we debate on this law on ethnicity and cohesiveness that we abolish, once and for all, the concept of tribe by eliminating this document called the national identity card. We all saw for ourselves people being pulled from matatus and buses and being asked for their national identity cards and for that reason alone, being attacked, killed, injured and so on. Never did the colonial administration itself, when it promoted the national identity card, think that they had in mind a situation where because of your ethnicity and what appears on that card, that you can lose your life. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I beg to support and urge my colleagues to also support the Motion."
}