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"id": 197972,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Mungatana",
"speaker_title": "The Member for Garsen",
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"id": 185,
"legal_name": "Danson Buya Mungatana",
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"content": " Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me, first of all, take this opportunity to thank the people of Garsen for having re-elected me to serve them for a second time. I want to also congratulate Mr. Speaker for taking up the position he is in. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is an old Indian tribe that had the tradition that after every nine seasons, they would take the king to a big celebration as if they were enthroning him. They would lead him to a big prepared hole and dump him there, together with his servants and choose a new king. They did not know about democracy or any other process of choosing a king. However, they knew that in every human society there was need for rejuvenation and rebirth of its leadership. I am speaking on the point of this Parliament. We have been stuck on old traditions for a very long time. In his Speech, the President congratulated the Ninth Parliament in which I had an opportunity to serve, for passing only 17 Bills. This is not in my very humble opinion a tradition that we would like to carry on with in this Tenth Parliament. We have elected a new Speaker who speaks of the future of our Parliament that will be effective, IT sensitive, one that will be productive and that will have televised debates. We want you to know that we want to support this move and bring a rebirth in this House, so that we can move forward with the development of this country. March 12, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 117 Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the legislative programme that His Excellency the President outlined spoke of many things. However, he gave top priority to four crucial Bills. I would not want to talk about the first three Bills, but the establishment of the Ethnic Relations Commission of Kenya Bill is of great interest to me. Every time, people talk about ethnic communities, there has been a tendency to speak about those clearly identified communities and try to think how they can balance them and sort out the issues that surround ethnic communities and the challenges we have in this country. My honest appeal to this House is that when this Bill does come to the House and when we establish this commission, we should think about another minority community and not the El Molo or the other ones that we have identified before. There is a community which I belong to and which some and many people here belong to and maybe our children will belong to whether we like it or not. It is the community that cannot claim to have a clear genealogical heritage from either one tribe or another that we have identified in this country, even from any of the 43 ones. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there are people whose grandparents came from across the divide of these communities. There are people whose mothers and fathers came from across the divide of these communities. They have married and reproduced and their children have married and remarried in other communities. There is a community called the Kenya community. It is a very marginalised community which went to schools that spoke Swahili and English languages. We also had to learn what our fathers tell us is our mother tongue. Actually my father would teach me what is my mother tongue, but really it was not my mother tongue because my mother tongue would be a different language. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am raising this issue because I think we need to preach cohesion and integration in Kenya. Countries that have developed and gone ahead in these matters of democracy and whatever have not been preaching separation. They have been preaching integration and cohesion. That is what we should be emphasising. I pray that when this commission is established, it will try to address these issues and there are very many of them. I would be interested in letting this House know that even in old democracies like that of England which we can claim is one of the older democracies in the developed world, on 24th August, 2006, the Secretary of Communities, Ms. Ruth Kelly, set out a commission that was not going to look at ethnic or racial issues, but specifically to look at integration and cohesion of racial and even faith issues that are affecting England to date. These challenges will be with us for a long time. What we should be emphasising again and again, is that we are one country, and one nation and one people. I hope it will be in the terms of reference of this commission when it is formed. We should teach our children that this country is one, right from where we were before we started having all these other problems. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, we should have in the terms of reference of that commission a discussion on whether or not the ethnic radio stations in this country are helping us towards integration and cohesion of this society or are they emphasising our differences. We need to look at these things and debate them. If I set up my mother tongue station, it would not have interest on any other thing that happens around the country. By the way, my mother is a Taita. My father is a Pokomo and if I set up a Pokomo radio station, it will not be interested in what the Taita people are doing and yet we come even from the same province. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we must debate the terms of reference of this Ethnic Relations Commission of Kenya Bill. This is because many radio stations came up as an executive order from the former Minister for Information and Communications. They just issued frequencies and people started radio stations. We know the roles these radio stations played during the recent electioneering period. We also know the roles ethnic radio stations played in Rwanda during the 118 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 12, 2008 difficult years in that country. The terms of reference of this Commission should be to talk about how we can bring a vibrant new Kenya where people are not going to look at themselves as Pokomos first and then Kenyans, but as Kenyans first and then whatever other ethnic communities they come from. We need to suggest ways in which regional social discriminations that have been there can be balanced in terms of wealth and economic distribution of this country. I think one of the greatest achievements we shall make in this Tenth Parliament is to initiate dialogue among ethnic communities in this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the third and final issue I would like to speak very briefly about is coffee. The President spoke about amending the Coffee Act, 2001 to provide for direct sales of coffee. The Sugar Act was also discussed here. We need to develop crops for regions such as the Coast Province where we can also talk about big terms like this so that this region would never again feel marginalised in this country. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}