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"id": 197722,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/197722/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Munya",
"speaker_title": "The Member for Tigania East",
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"id": 279,
"legal_name": "Joseph Konzolo Munyao",
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"content": " Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to the Presidential Speech. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the people of Tigania East for giving me the privilege to represent them in this august House once again. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I would like to agree with all the speakers who have contributed that, anybody who will deny that our country is in a crisis is somebody, probably, who does not want to face the truth head on. We have gone through a crisis and we are not yet over with it. As leaders, we must rise to the occasion and see how we can resolve it. But we must also learn that we are part of the problem because the crisis was as a result of failure of our institutions to do the jobs that they are supposed to do and also failure of leadership. When I say leadership here, I mean collective leadership; all of us and not one individual. We have contributed to that crisis. We are the ones who went around making hate speeches when we were campaigning. We are the ones who were saying: \"The problem of this country is this community.\" You want to divert your constituents from the real problem. You tell them: \"You are poor because another community is rich.\" You want to simplify your problems. You do not want to tell them the bitter truth. You want to re-direct their energies in hating other people. Then, when you create the problem and plant seeds of discord and the fruits come, you make noise about it. That is the problem we must address. We have been avoiding to pass legislations here to deal with people who preach hate. The time has come now for us to do that. There are people who think being good politicians is calling other people names and hating them. That is how they look good. That is how they earn their living by becoming politicians. You cannot build careers on the lives of Kenyans. Let us address the problems that confront this country. The biggest problem that we have in this country is that we have a tribe of rich people and a tribe of very many poor Kenyans. We do not have one rich community. Anybody who wants to tell his people that there is one community that is rich and the other communities are poor is lying to them. What we have here are a few wealthy people who continue to use politics to become even wealthier. They are the ones who even pay militias to kill other people and burn other people's homes; homes of poor people and peasants who own nothing! That is the monster we have to learn how to deal with. You use your position as a Government Minister to acquire a lot of land in your home area without buying it and then later, you come here and want to talk about land problems. Who has created the land problem? It is you! You come to the House with hypocrisy and you want us to accept your hypocrisy as leadership! It is high time we spoke the truth in this House so that, as we address the problem, we address the real problem. We should stop looking at the smokescreen and window-dressing. I have no problem with wealth. It is important for people to make wealth. But work for it, create and use it. In fact, Vision 2030 that we are talking about is a vision to make Kenya richer, so that we can deal with poverty. That is because creating wealth deals with poverty. 150 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 13, 2008 Of course, we must address the issue of re-distribution. How do we create wealth and also make sure that it is spread to as many people as possible, so that we do not have extremely rich people and extremely poor people? Those are the challenges that we have to address together. That is why I am welcoming this Grand Coalition that is going to solve all our problems. I hope it will because everywhere, there are headlines in the newspapers reading: \"Grand Coalition! The new dawn of Kenya. Kenya is born again!\" I want to believe so. I want to believe that once we have Ministers in their offices, they are not going to be very comfortable and forget that there are problems that we are going to deal with. That is why I want to tell those who will be Backbenchers in this House to be on their guard! This is not the first time we have gone through this kind of exercise. We had NARC. We were told it was going to solve our problems. When they went there, they were very comfortable people; all of them! We are so concerned about perks and what we get. That is why we are even rating our Ministries. We say: \"This is an important Ministry and this one is not important. The Ministry of State for Provincial Administration and National Security is important but the Ministry that takes care of livestock, so that our pastoralists can have enough, export and feed our people, is not important.\" Why is it not important? It is because there are not enough contracts there where one can make some money! Why are we not speaking the truth? Then, the newspapers and media, who are also part of the problem, are happy praising that! \"Plum jobs! Less important Ministry!\" Why is it less important if you are giving services to the ordinary citizens of this country? We need to change our mindsets. Mr. Speaker, Sir, reforms are important. We are going to recreate our institutions. But the people who run the institutions and give life to them are the human beings behind them. Are we going to create other human beings from Mars to come and run those institutions? Then we need to make Kofi Annan our Governor! That is because if we do not have the people--- If everybody is thinking only about positions and not what we will deliver from those positions, then where are we going to? So, let us reform. I am not trivialising the need for reforms and positions. But I am saying that we over-emphasize the power that goes with the positions. We think it is more important than the services we deliver when we are in that position. Can we rise to the occasion and be able also to come up with work ethics and put service ahead of everything else, so that we can recreate this country? We have Frequency Modulation (FM) stations that preach hatred everyday and night. They say: \"That community is very bad and this one is very good.\" Is there a time when a collective group commits a crime? I do not know where one group sat down as Merus and decided: \"Now, we are committing a crime as Merus!\" Or where Luos sat as a group and said: \"We are committing a crime as Luos.\" We have individual criminals or gangs! But there is no community that is criminal. There is no community that is bad in Kenya. So, when we preach that, we think that we are doing a good thing. We are destroying the fabric of our country. We need to look back so that we can rebuild Kenya again. Mr. Speaker, Sir, on the reforms that we need, I want to say that the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK)--- I am not saying that it is the main cause of the problem because, as I have said, over the years, we have been watering the seeds of hatred in this country. The general elections only triggered it. Then, the ECK mismanaged the general elections. We have to accept that fact! How can we have a Chairman of the ECK on national television before he announces results saying: \"Results are being cooked\", and then we expect that nothing will happen? An irresponsible Chairman making utterances that are not supposed to be uttered by somebody who is supposed to lead a national institution! Incompetent people running our institutions! That is part of the problem. We may not even have a big problem with the structure of our institutions, but we have many incompetent people who have been given positions to work there. They do not even understand the heavy responsibility they carry. You hear a Chairman doing that and then he ignites the whole March 13, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 151 country into violence! Then, he still wants to remain there! You see them doing workshops! For what? One of the first reforms we want to do is to dismantle that Commission! We should see if we can come up with better people who can handle a national election. That is because the ECK is a very important institution. You can see what it has done to this country. The anger and problem may have been there. The politicians had been preaching that hatred throughout. But they needed something to trigger. They found it with the ECK - a mismanaged institution. You may crack jokes that are misplaced---"
}