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"speaker_name": "Capt. Nakitare",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to express my thoughts towards this Motion on the Report of the 115th Inter- Parliamentary Union (IPU). This covers a big responsibility for hon. Members all over the world. The House of the people for the people by the people is a Parliament. It is a place where people have to be thinkers. It is a place where the roots of law originate. However, laws are made after crimes have been committed. That is when this House comes to establish laws to control those crimes. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we may not have been in Geneva when hon. Members were meeting there. However, all our thoughts are based on the experience that we have here in this country. Africa is our continent, East Africa our region and Kenya our nation. When you put hon. Members from different countries together and let them talk about issues and bring about a level of understanding, that harmonises the laws of the continent. I am proud of the Kenyan Parliament! It has committees and hon. Members who are serving in other parliaments. We have senior hon. Members in the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) and others soon to be joining the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA). These are all Parliamentarians who will talk of our prestige. The column of understanding is the Speaker who controls the minds of hon. Members and brings them to order. Experience tells us that we, hon. Members, can either destroy or develop a country. Loose April 5, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 449 talk in parliament is a source of information to people. Parliament is made up of hon. Members who represent political parties. However, should a political party stand to be a nasty opposer of another political party outside, intellectually, those political parties and their meetings should end when an hon. Member comes to the Chamber. We come here to legislate. We do not come here to promote our political parties. That is, to me, a dietary method that has encroached our country and goes contrary to the IPU spirit. When you look at the parliaments of Uganda and Tanzania, how do they perceive the Parliament of Kenya? They have to also know that we are in harmony. However, in the case of the East African Federation (EAF), this is an issue on which Kenya should check itself. Hon. Members here must check themselves. If we are craving to form a federation, yet we misbehave; are mischievous and poignant, how will those neighbours look at us? Are we a good example to be their quality partners? That is an issue that we have to look into. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, at the end of the day, these parliaments are going to sit down and make another constitution that will harmonise East African countries for another major assembly headed by, probably, the President of the EAF. So, our people should cool down. Of course, politics is palatable; so, it has enzymes that can cause indigestion in a nation. Recently, we had a referendum in this country and there was mischief. The dietary methods that political parties employed in this country manipulated our country; now people are looking at each other as households, tribes and not as one nation. Are we a good example? That also affects the security of the country. I must thank the Minister of State for Administration and National Security. He is going through hard times. He has to move old borders. He has restrained the military from getting involved in border issues with other countries. We are provoked by people who come in as militia. Those are people with military training. It beats me when the Minister sends the Kenya Police Reserve, Administration Police or the Kenya Police Force to fight militias who have military training. We look at this and say: \"What kind of force is this going to be?\" These are military people! A soldier and a policeman are two different people. Soldiers are trained to destroy. Policemen are trained to arrest and prosecute. These are the areas where Kenyans are very polite. When we look at the behaviour of Ethiopia, we have bilateral agreements with these neighbours. We cannot talk about Somalia because it is going through a transitional period. A child who is born in Somalia now does not know peace. We have to make sure that we educate these people that they are human beings and that there is peace. We had an armoury some time back in the 1960s. Those days, we used to talk about armament, but now we have to look for ways of disarming people. I urge the Minister of State for Administration and National Security to enforce the law on arms. That law exists. If a person wants to own a gun, then he or she must be a member of a rifle club. That person should be authorised to own a gun. If this should change, then any person who has a gun must be registered. Even a headman must know that, that person owns a gun. Should a gun be used, then its serial number, make and source should be identified. Why should we have guns in illegal hands in this country? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are an agricultural country. Farmers, for example, in Trans Nzoia District are now busy preparing for the seasonal crop, but we are now worried of the current situation on the ground which appears to be like the one of 1992. We do not want a repeat of what happened then. As the hon. Member for Saboti Constituency, I am proud to be a Kenyan and I would not like to hear a gunshot anywhere in our country. It is, therefore, the duty of the Minister of State for Administration and National Security to make sure that people abide by the law. He also needs to make sure that all illegal guns are destroyed the way he destroyed 8,000 guns recently. It is not a piece of cake! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, our police officers out there have no protection at all. For example, they do not have bullet-proof jackets even as they work out there in the cold. I think it is high time now our Government ensured that all police vehicles are equipped with computers so 450 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES April 5, 2007 that communication can be made easy. It has been very difficult now, with mobile telephony in place--- It is not a question of ship to shore communication or high frequency communication. People who commit crimes make use of telephone communication. They are as smart in communication as the Kenya Police and the Kenya Army. We need to look at these kind of things. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have always been amazed at the way the laws of this country have been turned upside down. For instance, we have privatised sensitive sectors of this Government. We have stripped ourselves naked and these are some of the things that the Inter- Parliamentary Union (IPU) questions. The IPU asks: \"How do we protect our countries?\" Recently, disaster struck our livestock industry. The Government had to look for money to eradicate the Rift Valley Fever. Livestock farmers are mainly carnivorous - I believe all of us are carnivorous because we eat meat. For a period of time, when the Rift Valley Fever struck, meat was not part of the diet for most people. However, the Government was swift enough to control the disease. For how long are we going to have this kind of stuff? We need to have a regulatory system where Parliament makes laws and they are implemented. We do not come here as commissioners. We do not come to Parliament to be commissioners of inquiry; we come here to legislate. The teeth for IPU are growing, and we are just like a teething baby, but after some time, we will know how to \"chew\" laws and \"digest\" them well. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is not good to personalise issues. We cannot make any strides if we do that. Rwanda and Burundi have now joined the East African Community. It is because they have realised that the EAC has sensible people. Their respective Parliaments agree that we share our grievances, opinions and ideas with the other East African countries. Next, we would like to see the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Somalia come to sobriety. I believe that Southern Sudan will also be independent soon. We would like to see the people of these countries share with us because we are brothers. After all, we share the same soil. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are privileged to stand here to express views even regarding our continent. If you ask me what is discussed in the Pan African Parliament, I will not be able to tell you because we do not share notes with them. Again, if you asked me what happens in the East African Legislative Assembly, I will tell you that I do not know. Until we sit together as Parliamentarians and share information, our knowledge will not be useful at all. So, the IPU provides legislators with an opportunity to share knowledge from different sources. If you look at our political system, a wise man once said that democracy is good, but it is not good enough. However, what is democracy, anyway? We, Africans, are democratic because we have African socialism. In African socialism, we also have capitalism. People used to own large herds of cattle, many wives and many children. They made sure that each child had a share of the wealth. That is democracy. The idea of copying ideologies from other countries is not good and we have to be careful with it. The cold war is now gone. Perhaps, it is because of the interchange of ideas through systems such as the IPU that the cold war was diffused. However, I still feel that the IPU has a lot of work to do. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have to make sure that we give farmers freedom. I have not heard many hon. Members speak against the hiking of prices of agricultural inputs. We know that policies are made in Government, but they must be originating from somewhere. Who is this who makes life hard for other people? Do we come to Parliament to make life hard for our people or do we come to defend them? Today, countries all over the world are calling for the Purchasing Power Density (PPD). We used to peg our economy on coffee, tea and pyrethrum, but because of the open market, we have lost the PPD. We do not have diamonds, gold or any other minerals. We are agriculturalists. If farmers were given facilities as medical doctors, Kenya would be a granary for Africa. We would be feeding other countries who do not have the same good soil as ours. We do not have to look at ourselves as poor. Why do we introduce poverty into ourselves April 5, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 451 by abandoning farms and encouraging urbanization? Is it just because urbanization is for those who went to school? Some people think that after they have graduated from the university or college, home is bad. One goes to a city and establishes his or her life there. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, to reduce urbanization, I think we must decentralise industries. We can have people in rural areas instead of congestion in cities. Why do we have"
}