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"id": 197952,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/197952/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Wetangula",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Foreign Affairs",
"speaker": {
"id": 210,
"legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
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"content": " Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, Sir, for giving me an opportunity to say a few words in support of the President's Speech. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I will start by paying tribute to the President and the leader of the Orange Democratic Movement, hon. Raila Odinga, for signing the Accord that brought peace and normalcy to the country. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the events that followed the General Elections of December last year exposed the soft under-belly of our country. The events shook the fabric of our society to the core. We were all left vulnerable and nobody across the Floor or behind me could have wanted what we went through. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I am happy that sanity reigned and we eventually solved the problem. All of us assembled here, and other Kenyans, have no alternative country. Peace is not an option. We must all embrace it. We can stand here and talk about education, water, roads, healthcare and everything under the sun. However, we must always realise that there is no way to peace, but peace is the way in everything we do. Without peace, even our politics, will be made nonsense of in our environment. We have heard of colleagues who were marooned here in Nairobi. They could not get to their constituencies. The momentum that the events took went beyond an electoral dispute, showed us that we have people in this country who have the propensity and capacity of engaging in extreme criminality. We need to check them. Bands of youths were taken advantage of by some of us. As we grapple with this truth in this country, I want to plead with all of us that when the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission comes into force, we must remember the words of the Holy Bible: That, it is only the truth that will set us free. We all have a duty to stand up and say the painful truth, own up to our acts and omissions and own up to our shortcomings for a better Kenya tomorrow. We all must stand up and say with a loud voice that never again shall we have a situation where we go through a noble democratic process and end up with a blood bath that causes an embarrassment to everybody. Mr. Speaker, Sir, our tourism sector has suffered so much. From an average inflow of more than 40,000 tourists per week, we reached a low level of less than 500 tourists. This is revenue lost. I recall sometime in February, when I came from Addis Ababa with the Foreign Minister for Sudan. I went to book him at the Hotel Intercontinental. Apart from the CNN crew from Atlanta, the Minister of Sudan was the only other guest. The hotel did not have a single other soul. This is a shame to our country. We must carry this collective shame to the future knowing that we should not be hostages of history. We must learn from history and move on. Now that we have two critical Bills coming to the House, I want to urge that we pass them quickly, have things fixed up for the country to move forward. We should remember that the political class is solving a problem they created. There are many more people down there. We should not end up by signing the accord, sharing positions and forgetting the hungry mama, the hungry child, the hungry papa back home, still staying in camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). We should not forget that the Kenyan farmer today is paying Kshs4,000 for a 50- 108 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 12, 2008 kilogramme bag of DAP, up from Kshs1,650 last year. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we should not forget that the farmer growing sukuma wiki in Nyandarua District was unable to get to the market in Nairobi for a period of one month. We should not forget that the small bunch of armed and misguided people in Mount Elgon District have made lives miserable for the majority of the peace-loving people of that area. We should not forget that we have heightened the ethnic consciousness in this country to frightening limits. We must rise to the occasion and realise that there is no single community in this country that can have its way. Equally, there is no single ethnic community in this country that is in this country on invitation. We are all here by right. We shall all remain here as of right. We must learn how to appreciate each other. We must learn how to live with each other. Life is not about the people we like. Life is about the people we live with. If we embrace that understanding, we will very quickly solve the problems of this country. We will then make a meaningful contribution, sit down and find ways and means of how to develop our country. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we will then legitimately ask how it took the colonialists five years to build a railway line through hostile territory and terrain, from Mombasa to Kisumu. It now takes us six years to tarmac a road from Nyayo National Stadium to the Animal Orphanage. We should start asking ourselves why the colonialists took that short time to build a railway to Kisumu. It takes us so long to build a road from Mai Mahiu to Nakuru, and even as we finish sometimes, where we started is wearing off."
}