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"id": 228841,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/228841/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Munya",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister, Office of the President",
"speaker": {
"id": 279,
"legal_name": "Joseph Konzolo Munyao",
"slug": "joseph-munyao"
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"content": " Mr. Speaker, Sir, thank you for allowing me to contribute to the President's Speech. I will try to confine myself to the issues raised by the President in the Speech. When Jesus died, resurrected and appeared to his disciples, there were those who could not believe that he had resurrected and they wanted to be shown the scars. There are people here who also do not want to believe that this country is moving forward even when the signs are very clear and the scars can be seen. Our economy is growing at a 6.2 per cent rate from negative 2 per cent. Kenya has attained food self-sufficiency. When we had drought, unlike the previous years, we did not get any food aid from abroad. We were able to sustain this country with our own local resources. That is development. We are also able to support our own Budget 95 per cent. It is only 4 per cent which is still remaining to bridge the gap and then we will be economically independent. We will be able to run our own affairs without going abroad to ask other powers to assist us with strings tied to their assistance. As you know, a beggar has very little dignity. So, as our economy grows and as we make our country strong, we are also soaring up our dignity as a nation and trying to occupy the position that strong nations occupy among the family of nations. Mr. Speaker, Sir, one of the noble innovations that this Government has come up with, especially in the area of fighting corruption, is the issue of performance contracts where we have been recognised by the United Nations (UN) as the only Third World country that has been able to cascade performance contracts from the top level to the bottom. Even in our Ministry, we have performance contracts for chiefs. They have signed performance contracts and have a work programme. They are supposed to meet certain parameters for them to be considered to be working. I also want to thank the President for showing the way forward in terms of fighting crime; by proposing to introduce a legislation that would make the possession of firearms a capital offence. I want to urge my colleagues, especially those who come from areas where communities still practise cattle rustling, to use the resources at their disposal to change people's attitudes so that the communities can invest in income-generating activities instead of using firearms to raid each other. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I would like to talk about the proposed Political Parties Bill. This Bill will be brought here to provide funding for political parties. That is a very important Bill because it will assist our parties to democratise and remove the \"Big Man\" syndrome in our parties where a chairman, who happens to have a lot of money, is a lord because there are no funds to run the party. If you look at our parties, you will see that they have very little indicators of being real parties. Apart from having names and registration certificates, all other factors that are important to make up political parties are missing. One of the key factors is lack of internal democracy in our parties. We do not hold elections in our parties. When we do, we only hold piecemeal cosmetic elections for the purpose of fulfilling the requirements of the Registrar of Societies. Otherwise, if you look at the recruitment and transparency in the elections, you will find that a lot is lacking. You cannot have a multiparty democracy without strong parties. Some of the parties, which are masquerading as parties, are composed of three individuals; the chairman and two other people who meet and say they have formed a party. Some of those people are quarrelling and declaring themselves presidential candidates and their parties are parties by name. So, if those parties are given public funds, you can imagine where the money will go. The funds will go to the individuals who formed them. If you look at the Bill - I do not want to anticipate debate - there are no rules for accountability and the management of that money. Therefore, we will be creating structures for 166 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 28, 2007 corruption and misuse of public funds if we do not have benchmarks for ensuring that these parties are real and they deserve to be funded from the public coffers. Perhaps one of the most important ways of ensuring that the parties meet the criteria is to look at those which are represented in Parliament. Perhaps such parties would require funding. If we give every registered party funding, Kenyans would rush to register more parties. Many briefcase parties would come up and the whole process would turn into another business that Kenyans who are clever can use to get money from public coffers. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I want to talk about the constitutional review process, or the so-called minimum reforms. When we went into the referendum, we took the Draft Constitution to Kenyans to vote on it. We did that because we recognised that the sole responsibility of making the constitution for this country is the responsibility of the Kenyan people. Indeed, the judgement that came from court said that, ultimately, if you want to make a new constitution, the people to ratify it are the citizens of this country. I do not know how we would surmount that court ruling which prohibits us from making fundamental changes in the Constitution without involving the people of this country. Even as we go into the negotiations, which we are all supporting, I do not know how we will determine what changes are fundamental and, therefore, require the ratification of the citizens of this country, and which changes are not fundamental and can be done by the Members of this House without the involvement of the Kenyan people. That said, the biggest problem in the review process is not really what changes we require. It is the political posturing and the desire of both sides of the political divide to take advantage of the changes in the Constitution to put themselves on a strong footing during the coming general election. That is an abuse of what we have been calling the constitutional review process. That is why Kenyans are increasingly getting tired of the constitutional review process. If you look at the opinion polls which were carried out recently, if you believe in them, you will be surprised to learn where the constitutional review talks were placed by Kenyans. Kenyans started with insecurity and said that it was their biggest challenge. The constitutional review talks were placed at the bottom. Kenyans are intelligent enough to see what is being done in their interest and what is being pursued for the benefit of the political class. What we are witnessing now is physically a debate between the political elite trying to see how they can position themselves properly to access power. It has nothing to do with the Kenyan population. Kenyans have realised that until we reach a point where we have bi-partisan politics where we can rise above our parties, we are not likely to get a new constitution. Even the minimum reforms may not be achieved."
}