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"speaker_name": "Mr. Abdikadir",
"speaker_title": "The Member for Mandera Central",
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"legal_name": "Abdikadir Hussein Mohamed",
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"content": " Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, my name is Abdikadir, the Member of Parliament for Mandera Central. I wish to support the Motion on the Presidential Speech. I wish to associate myself with the other hon. Members, who congratulated the President for the exposition of public policy. I wish to touch on the new Bills that the President said would be introduced, namely, the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission Bill and the issue about ethnicity. I believe that the President and hon. Raila, when they signed the Accord, did this country a lot of service. I believe what they did resulted in yesterday's events. This country had a glorious day and this Parliament showed the way for the country. I believe that this is the start of the hard work. Really, the taste of the pudding is in the eating. The next few months will show whether this country can really take the changes that are in store. I specifically think of the constitutional amendment and the constitutional review that is required to carry through what we started yesterday. The Constitution of this country is a patch-work and yesterday, it suffered another patch. The Constitution of this country has been talked about a lot. Time has come for the Constitution review. This cannot be delayed any more for the simple reason that the Constitution cannot work the way it was yesterday. We amended Section 3 of the Constitution yesterday. This is called the supremacy clause, which is supposed to be supreme. We made it a general rule yesterday because we provided for a proviso that is outside that supremacy. That cannot work for long. You heard many of my learned friends 246 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 allude to the problematic issues that the amendment was going to raise. This will definitely bog us down unless the Constitution is amended in whole. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, one hon. Member yesterday talked about Section 2A and the fact that he was ashamed when that section was carried. I disagree with him. I think the most shameful section in the Constitution was Section 127 of the Constitution, which was amended in 1992. That section completely withdrew the Constitution from the former Northern Frontier District (NFD). It basically suspended the entire constitution in the former NFD with the result that there was no protection to human rights in the whole of that region. This resulted in the massacre that you are aware of. This also resulted in the State being the sponsor of that massacre. Unfortunately, we had very terrible two months. The state has been one of the actors with many other actors. In northern Kenya, the tragedy was sponsored by the State. The State used this House to withdraw the Constitution in northern Kenya and then went ahead and enacted the Indemnity Act, which is still in force, to try and shield Government officials who were responsible for some of those atrocities in terms of civil liability. I believe that time has come for this Constitution to be amended so that we have, as in the words of hon. ole Ntimama, a new Constitution. I disagree with him in the sense that we really have a Constitution, but it is such a patch-work of sections that it does not work as it is supposed to. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the President talked about Vision 2030 in his Speech. Time has come for this country to take its place in the developed nations of this world. Everything is there going for this country. We have the human resource and other resources in terms of endowments from nature. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, an hon. Member referred to something called the \"Livestock Act\". It does not exist. I have not heard of a statute called \"Livestock Act\". That shows the inequities in terms of our law-making process and resource allocation. For instance, we have heard of tea and sugar cane farmers as poor as they maybe, but we have not heard much mention of the livestock sub-sector, especially in terms of resource allocation. I am happy that through Vision 2030, that region will be getting some form of attention. Going back to the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) and the ethnicity issue, a time has come for this country to face its dark history. It will be a very difficult time. I do not think we are aware of the issues that will face this country when we dig into our dark past. It can only go through if we sustain the good will that was seen in this House yesterday and the spirit shown by our two principal leaders in the previous two weeks. If we do so, then there is hope for this country. If we go back to the clock and dagger politics of one tribe against another or one party against the other, then we will have doomed this country. We will have missed an opportunity to correct our previous mistakes. I support the Presidential Speech delivered to this House on 6th March, 2008."
}