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"id": 230085,
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"speaker_name": "Dr. Kituyi",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Trade and Industry",
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"id": 293,
"legal_name": "Mukhisa Kituyi",
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"content": " Thank you very much, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. The Motion before us is basically procedural because we know that traditionally this is the time we should break off for the Christmas recess. So, we are not inventing anything, or running away from or towards something. We are just doing the normal thing we do. But we can sustain the rituals as if there is some reluctance in doing what we normally do. December 7, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 4293 I share the sense that we have a responsibility, as leaders, to tone down the hate rhetoric, to lower the temperatures that we are building up in our society and to focus on what is positive in order to identify, in a civilised way, where we are going wrong and do right. I have listened to the hon. Member who has just spoken. I have had very personal and long-running interest in what goes on in pastoralist areas. I know that for historical reasons, these have been largely forgotten and disadvantaged parts of this country, and they have a long way to go to catch up. But I also know it, as a reality, that during the lifespan of this Government, more investment has been put in opening up new water points, in addressing the long-term problems in the livestock sector, in committing resources to infrastructure, like the recent award of a tender for the construction of the Isiolo Road as part of the completion of the road to Moyale and the work on the airport in Isiolo. Work has been going on in affirmative allocation of resources for education. Last year, we had the worst drought in a generation. But for the first time in the history of this country, you could see army bowsers by the roadside delivering drinking water to emanciated families. We saw Government vehicles delivering fodder for livestock. We saw the Government buying depleted livestock and later on providing breeding livestock. These are positive things we must appreciate, even as we criticise and say that we would have liked to have more, instead of creating conditions to appear as if Government is raiding the most vulnerable in this society. Similarly, I wish to thank all Members of Parliament on both sides of the House, that in the annual cycle of flare-ups of friction between pastoralists and non-pastoralists during the extended drought, there has been much more civilised decorum in the conduct of Members in their public utterances that helped to speedily bring to control the skirmishes that were happening among our people. I want to urge hon. Members that we build on this and stigmatise politicians who want to incite ethnic hate as a way of purchasing cheap popular support. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I share the sense that this country needs to grow much more than it has done. We have done very well by our modest standards. Doubling ordinary revenues in a period of three and half years is no mean feat. But we are not where we need to be. We must all share responsibility, that issues that need to be done for this country should not be owned as part of partisan competition. Issues about the problem of insecurity in this country are important and solutions are not a monopoly of the Government. Let us collectively engage in determining what we can do to deal with this major threat to our national interests. We should not use it as an issue for scoring cheap political points. Similarly, if there is insufficient utilisation of the potential of this country as a destination of direct private investment, we shall ask ourselves what has gone wrong. We have done pretty well to move from negative growth. In fact, we have been given a very substantial positive rating by various polls, which have recognised the fact that the management of the factors of our economy is sound. To move to such a massive financing of our own expenditure as a Government is something that we should be proud of. If we are being slowed, then it is because people are playing politics with investment in our country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, just like hon. Mungatana said, you should go out there and interview the coffee farmer, who at long last is getting something out of his coffee or the milk producer who at long last is also getting something from his dairy production. They are now able to buy shares in KenGen and Kenya Airways. If you tell them that money in the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) comes from the sale of drugs, do you not think that you are a mad man? It could well be said that you are insulting the integrity and hurting the dignity of our country. You, in fact, would be abusing the proceeds of their labour. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if there is any money going into the NSE that comes out of drugs, then it is money that might have come out of drugs many years ago which was being 4294 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES December 7, 2006 hidden away because of lack of knowledge that if you manage the economy well, it will definitely give you the best prospects. Thanks to our good management, they can now seize the opportunity to claim the money. You cannot hold it against the Government that it has created conditions which are favourable for money that may have been hoarded elsewhere to be traded in the NSE. What we need to do as a society is to say: \"I know this drug peddler. Let us take him to court and clean up our act.\" We should not rise on a pedestal of lies and insult the decency of this country. This country has an opportunity to rise to another level. We need to offer leadership in the region. As we help in the search for peace in the Great Lakes Region, it is our responsibility to be more proactive than to engage in the pettiness that has characterised some of the Opposition politics in this country."
}