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{
"id": 215227,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/215227/?format=api",
"text_counter": 158,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Ochilo-Ayacko",
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"speaker": {
"id": 347,
"legal_name": "Ochilo George Mbogo Ayacko",
"slug": "ochilo-ayacko"
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, thank you for giving me an opportunity to make my contribution. I want to say that I subscribe to absolute freedom on matters of speech. I want to invite the other side of the House to look at what great democracies like the United States of America (USA) have done, particulary, when they crafted an article in the constitution that precluded the Congress from enacting any legislation that would abridge the freedom of speech. Human beings being primates, have a unique quality and behaviour. The behaviour or quality they enjoy in exception or exclusion to other beings, is their ability to communicate and express whatever they desire to. Any attempt by any individual human being or otherwise, to regulate that kind of expression, would negate the wholeness of human beings. If you have had occasion to read what Thomas Jefferson together with John Adams wrote regarding the freedom of press when they were crafting that specific proviso of the USA Constitution, the prescription they gave to injuries that people would suffer from any behaviour or expression that is offensive was, mass education of the society that would lead to what the able Prof. Anyang'-Nyong'o described as the correct culture. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to say that I was born after Kenya got Independence and I have been around. I have also heard this Government say that there is economic growth to the tune of 6.2 per cent and that, this growth and our being around has been without this Bill. So, I do not understand what has suffered the Government the urgency to bring this kind of Bill. Kenyans have talked in the past and have blamed the KANU Administration of being repressive and dictatorial. Among the score-cards that KANU as a Government had, was that they never attempted to stifle the press. So, I do not understand a Government; an Administration that came on board on its pretext or proposition that it would protect freedom, how so late and so early in this century, a legislation of this kind would be relevant. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I believe that a free press is important to the society, particularly, when members of the society want to have an opportunity to make informed choices. I believe that a free press is important to society particularly when that society is desirous towards moving to nationhood. I believe that a free press is an investment that we should hurry to invest in, in abundance. If we want to complain that our media houses and our Press is bad, then let us look ourselves directly in the media and ask; a Press is a private organization and nobody is obligated to read or hear what is written or said in the Press. It is us who buy the kind of stuff that is written or published by the Press. July 5, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2321 A lot of the gutter information that repulses us so much and we complain about; it is us, who buy the same when it is shoved down the windows of our cars as we drive in Nairobi. As long as it is not offensive to us individually we buy it, but when it is written about any of us, we feel so vexed and annoyed and we blame the media. The point that I am trying to make is that the Media has clientele who are the public. As long as the public is buying the sexy or violent stories, then the journalists will continue writing what the public would wish to buy and that would enhance the circulation of the same media houses. So, what is important is to have a society that is civilized enough to distinguish what it so desires and not punish the people who write what we want to read. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if it is pornography, I think it is the same society that is promoting it by buying circulations that are offensive to certain people. So, the most important thing to do is, as we embark on mass education, the way free and compulsory primary education is doing and the way free secondary education will do when it sets in, we will have an informed society that will choose what it will want to buy and will decline what it does not want to read. The time multi-partyism came to visit us in 1990 and thereafter, there were several publications like Society and others which are no longer on the streets. I think they died by natural attrition because they were no longer being purchased by people who by that particular time were stifled by freedom. Those publications are no longer there. Sensational stories that were necessary at that particular time, to push the Government of the day to open more space are no longer available. So, as the society develops, it is able to consume what it wants in the quality, style and fashion that it so desires. So, this Bill, in itself, is presupposing that, perhaps, the current administration is ahead of society in what---"
}