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{
    "id": 22594,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/22594/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 431,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Kimunya",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Transport",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 174,
        "legal_name": "Amos Muhinga Kimunya",
        "slug": "amos-kimunya"
    },
    "content": " Thank you Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to support this Report. I will take this opportunity to congratulate the Committee for the work they have been doing under very difficult circumstances. They have been handling many Bills. However, they have spared enough time to give us this Report. I do not want to take time on the professionals and the people who have been named in this Report because their CVs speak for themselves. They are properly qualified. They have passed through the process and, to date, I see no objections raised so far. I believe that they will pass through this final process today. I just want to say a few things on why we need this panel. That is because they are not an end in themselves. They are part of a process. This vetting process is not an end in itself. It is part of the means to achieve a Judiciary that we can have confidence in. Looking through - and if I go back in terms of various dockets I have served within the last eight years starting from Lands, Finance, Trade and Transport now - the one common factor that has been talked about concerning our Judiciary is that when investors lose confidence in a country, their first point is the Judiciary. If I put my money in this country and something went wrong, would I get redress? Would I be protected? That has been lacking. As a result of that, whether in reality or as a perception, the cost of doing business in this country has been rather high. The cost of political risk insurance that you have to take to secure your business deals has been quite high. I do believe that this vetting process will bring back that confidence. The message we are sending to the world out there is that Kenya will be a place where you can do business; where your business transactions and contracts can actually be respected. If they are not respected, you can seek recourse in the courts of law. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, as we were passing the Bills last week on the operationalization of the Constitution, the one thing that kept on coming up was the Bill of Rights which talks about the rights of the people. There is no other assurance that we can find in terms of securing those rights. We can only secure these rights in a court of law. We can go to court to ensure our rights have been reinstated if they are jeopardized and to get the right interpretations. I am sure that this panel will appreciate the task they have ahead of them. It is not just a matter of a clearing house for the judges. They must keep their eye on the ball in terms of ensuring that we bring back confidence in our Judiciary. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I know we have had problems with our Judiciary whether in terms of perception or bad judgments that we have also seen. The variety of judgments has also given some issue in terms of why one should do this and the other does the opposite. As Prof. Saitoti and Mr. Obure did mention, let this process not be a witch hunt. Let this process not start from the premise that all judges are bad unless they have been vetted. Let us start from the perception that everyone is good and what we are really looking for is that assurance test and a validation for purposes of building the confidence. Obviously, the ones who do not fit the goodness test will fall on the wayside. However, not the reverse that everyone is bad unless they pass the fitness test. I also want to agree with Mr. Mungatana in terms of the commissioners not just the ones on this panel, but they must pass the patriotism test. They are doing this for Kenya. Hopefully, they are not just doing it because they have retired and they need to seek a retirement job. I want to put it on record here and express my disappointment on what happened at the CIC and that unnecessary fight over the salaries. It showed Kenyans in very bad light that we thought we were getting commissioners to help the country, but people were demanding to be paid so much money. When you compare with what these people were earning before that, it speaks volumes. There is not enough sense of patriotism or the kind of patriotism that was exhibited last week by Parliament when we stayed until midnight. There was nobody who asked that we be paid overtime. This is the patriotism that we are looking for. If hon. Members could stay until midnight for several days without asking to be paid overtime, I think this was real patriotism. I saw Dr. Laboso as the Chair working her throat out in calling out clauses without asking to be paid overtime. When commissioners are appointed and the first thing they demand is to be paid so much, I think they are already failing the patriotism test. However, looking at the people in this panel, these are people who are ready to serve this country rather than to make some extra money as they go along. I do hope that this can be inculcated as a culture in all commissioners who will be appointed. I also do agree with Dr. Eseli that there might be some problems in terms of balancing across all the counties. However, I would suggest that we start now looking through the whole schedule; for example, do we have commissioners coming from every county? If we have to go that route of having an all inclusive wider team of the various commissioners, by the time we have filled all those, at least, there will be one man and one woman from every county. We should not just look at the regions and ethnicity."
}