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"speaker_name": "Mr. Khaniri",
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"content": "Thank you very much, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to make my remarks on the Presidential Speech. Allow me to join those who have spoken earlier in congratulating the President for the very well prepared and elaborate Speech that he delivered to this House during the Official Opening. Good as the Speech was, in my opinion, I think it was misplaced. The President himself has in the past accused the Opposition of behaving as if elections are coming tomorrow. I think he has fallen into the same trap. He behaved as if elections are coming tomorrow; trying to give an account of himself instead of concentrating on issues affecting this country. That is a Speech that the President should have given when he is launching his campaign later this year. In fact, I would like to advise him to keep that same Speech and read it again when he launches his campaigns towards the end of the year. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I was part of the team that went out there to campaign for this Government and I did it so vigorously. I know that Kenyans elected this Government on the basis of the promises that we made to them. The President, realising that his time is lapsing and most of those promises have not been fulfilled, the Government has now resorted to diversionary tactics. We promised the youth of this country that we will give them jobs. To be very specific, we said we will give them 500,000 jobs every year. When the President was delivering his Speech here, other than just mentioning the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF), he said nothing in regard to giving our youth jobs. He said nothing! I have gone through the Speech; I listened to him. He avoided that completely. I expected that this being his last year in Office, he would come here and tell us: \"This is the number of youth we have employed, although it may not be the targeted figure of 500,000 job a year---\". He should also give us reasons why he could not achieve that figure. However, you will agree with me that instead of the youth being employed, there has been a lot of retrenchment going on in the Government. The youth out there have not forgotten this particular promise. I would like to tell His Excellency that a promise is a promise! If this particular promise is not fulfilled, then he is going to face the wrath of the youth come election time in December, 2007. We are waiting for him at the ballot box so that we can ask him about the jobs he promised us. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, unemployment is one of the biggest problems in this country, and yet this Government does not seem to have a clear-cut policy on reducing it. If we do not address the issue of unemployment amongst the youth, then we are going to continue experiencing the insecurity that we are experiencing now. All the crimes we are now seeing are April 3, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 307 executed by the youth who have to find alternative ways of putting food on their table. Therefore, for us to solve the problem of insecurity, we have to address the issue of unemployment amongst our youth. The other issue I would like to comment on is corruption. I know that many hon. Members have talked about it. We all remember very fondly when the President proclaimed that he was going to run an administration that will have zero-tolerance to corruption. I want to state here that this Government is only giving lip service to the fight against corruption. My opinion, and I think that I share this opinion with very many Kenyans out there, is that corruption has increased. It is much more than it used to be during the Nyayo Era. That is a fact. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, appointment of more judges will not help to solve the corruption menace in this country. They told us that they are appointing more judges so that they can reduce corruption. How many corruption-related cases have they prosecuted since this Government came to power? We all remember vividly that in the Anglo Leasing Scandal, a few Ministers and top civil servants were fired. When they thought that it had got out of people's minds, some of them were reinstated. For those who were not reinstated, their positions are still vacant. How do you explain to the country why the Ministry of Lands has not had a substantive Minister for all these months? It only has an acting Minister. I am sure they are just waiting for a time to reinstate those Ministers that they fired. They should just go ahead and do it because we know that is their game plan. Corruption is very rampant in this country. There is a businessman I used to know during the KANU days and I remember when we were campaigning for hon. Kibaki, I met him somewhere in the streets - he is a dubious businessman - and he told me: Nyinyi piganeni huko, which means \"you fight there\". He went on to tell me: \"When you win that thing, you will find me in State House before you get there.\" Indeed, I met him a few weeks ago and asked him how his business was doing. He told me it was doing very well. He then asked me, \"Do you know why? It is because the Ministers during Nyayo time were satisfied with Kshs50 million, Kshs10 million or Kshs5 million. Hawa ni wazuri sana. They want to pull deals of Kshs1 billion, Kshs500 million and so on.\" That is just an indication that corruption is rampant in this country---"
}