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"speaker_name": "Dr. Mwiria",
"speaker_title": "The Member for Tigania West",
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"id": 190,
"legal_name": "Valerian Kilemi Mwiria",
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"content": " Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the hon. Member for Muhoroni Constituency had this habit even in the last Parliament, talking on trivialities and interrupting debate on matters of dress! I hope that he will restrain from this habit, so that we can talk about more serious issues! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me also congratulate those who were part of the peace process, beginning with the principals. We had an opportunity to learn new vocabulary. It is like when the late Jomo Kenyatta died and \" hayati \" became a new vocabulary that people were not used to. Our principals did a great job. More than that, we must not forget the various teams that led to the conclusion of the talks. Often we blamed these people as if they were not representing our positions. We really should sympathise with them. If they sounded extreme, it was because they represented the positions that we asked them to advance. We must appreciate the great job they did for this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we must also thank Kenyans in general for insisting that we must come up with a solution. If this matter was just left to the politicians, we would have continued with our extreme positions, not mindful of the suffering a lot of Kenyans were going through, the trouble our business community was going through and not generally aware of the many problems, including those that have been spoken about related to tourism that our great country was exposed to. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is very unfortunate that we sunk that low. We sunk that low because in our midst there was dishonesty. It would not have been possible if there were no dishonest politicians in our midst. That is why there were accusations of rigging and problems of ethnic cleansing. It is also because there was poor leadership in some of our institutions, beginning with the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK). When we have a leader of an organisation like the ECK who says that he does not know who won, then we wonder why some people struggled so hard to support the review of his term, if they knew that is the trouble he was going to get this country into. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there were also other problems with war mongers. There was more trouble in the country because there were politicians who were good at whipping up ethnic tensions. Some people were prepared at any time to support the kind of divisions that we witnessed in this country. I hope that, with the committee that has been formed to get to the bottom of this matter, we are going to know the whole truth, and take appropriate action against people who were involved, either directly or indirectly, in the situation that we found ourselves in, in the last three months. I hope that when that action is taken, politicians are not going to start pointing at the fact that their communities are being targeted, because those who were involved in those problems did not do so on behalf of their communities. It was often because they were after their own individual gains. If we want this matter to hold, we should be very careful about not politicizing along ethnic lines the findings that are going to come out of the committee of 15, who are going to tell us the truth about the problems that we went through. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is good that we came up with this agreement. It is a good model for Kenya. As we know, the Independence Constitution allowed for that kind of power-sharing and the positions of Prime Minister and so on. This may turn out to be a very good model for the rest of Africa, where countries are divided along ethnic lines, and where it may not be acceptable for certain communities to think that they are being left out of participating in national politics and the economic activities of a country the best way they would like. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, democracy must suit the specific realities of countries. We cannot continue making so much noise about how we must stick to certain principles if they are not appropriate for our Kenyan and African environment. On the issue of the Grand Coalition, there are those who are worried that it may lead to a 78 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 12, 2008 dilution of democracy. I am not so sure that when we had the various political parties in the last Parliament we were any more democratic. In most cases we took positions based on our ethnicity, or the positions that were taken by leaders. Our differences had often nothing to do with ideology or principles, but had more to do with craving for power. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if we look at the manifestos that we are supposed to put together and come up with one common manifesto, there is a lot more that is common about them than what is different. If anything, the problem has not been their similarities, but the real problem has been the extent to which we have implemented what we have written in those manifestos. As a matter of fact, we realize that at one point or the other, even those who were contesting for the position of President in this country, at one point they were in the same political parties. The Vice-President and Minister for Home Affairs, Mr. Musyoka, for example, worked with His Excellency the President for many years in KANU and NARC. Mr. Raila has worked with former President Moi and His Excellency the President. Many of us, who were involved in these contests, were at one point or the other working together as teams. Really, these are not differences of ideology but differences related to other positions that we like to take. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to believe that this kind of situation could even lead to more democracy. If we go back to the Parliaments immediately after independence, one of the reasons there were detentions, and all sorts of problems with some politicians, was because politicians were more open. I have always quoted as an example the Parliament where we had Kenyans who were more national in the way they took positions. This is the Parliament which had hon. Members such as Messrs. Wamwere, Orengo, Mr. Chelagat Mutahi and Mr. Chibule wa Tsuma. Those days, Parliamentarians took positions based more on national issues as opposed to the positions that were taken by the various political parties. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, yes, indeed, this is a new beginning. But it must be more of a new beginning for the majority of the people of Kenya and not for politicians. It is not like has been said: \"It is jobs for the boys\". The real problem in this country is, actually, not so much one of ethnic divisions, but one of social inequality. The reason there were people in the streets fighting on behalf of politicians is because we had poor people to exploit. We had poor jobless people whom we could equip with war gear. There were people to just take advantage of. Until we resolve the problem of inequality through educational programmes, increasing employment opportunities and reducing the gap between the very rich, who are few in this country, and the majority of our people who are poor, we are not going to have a lasting solution to the kind of problem that we experienced. Really, it is not about people getting together to share power; it is the extent to which we are going to give more economic power to the majority of the people of this country, who are dying in poverty. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, again, this is a new beginning for a united country, where we will be able to take advantage of the diversity of Kenyans. This is where we realise that it is much better, for example, for a person from Rift Valley Province to take advantage of opportunities in the Coast Province or some other place. We want to take advantage of opportunities in the capital city, because this capital belongs to all of us. If we can nurture that united country, again, this will, indeed, be a new beginning. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this must also be a new beginning in terms of the institutions that we put in place to support that agreement and unity. The new beginning must also include respect for merit, and not giving of jobs on the basis of who is a sycophant of which politician or which ethnic group one comes from. It must be about merit, so that if we, for example, look for people who merit from North Eastern Province we will find them. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this must also be a new beginning in terms of a March 12, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 79 \"clean\" Government. Messrs Musyoka and Raila and His Excellency the President, Mr. Kibaki, all spoke about the need to fight corruption and the need for a \"clean\" Government. They are now working together. They have an opportunity to put that in place. We are not going to have a new beginning if we have \"dirty\" people in Government, or people who have supported ethnic cleansing, or those who do not care for this country but care for themselves. I think we have a unique opportunity. If we look for people from all the political parties, we will find people that are clean, people who can be trusted by the people of Kenya to never again get us back to the situation that we were in. Finally, I would like to talk about whether or not this coalition will hold. Yes, it will hold, but it will depend very much on the extent to which we educate our people and the extent to which politicians play their role of uniting Kenyans as opposed to dividing them. I beg to support."
}