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"id": 230241,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Kiunjuri",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Energy",
"speaker": {
"id": 175,
"legal_name": "Festus Mwangi Kiunjuri",
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. I stand to support this Motion because we have time for everything. We have time for planning and time for implementation. We have been participating in legislation in this House very actively. During this Session, we have been passing two to three Bills every week. Therefore, we need time to look at those Bills and know how to implement them. Secondly, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, hon. Members should know that we have the General Elections next year. For that purpose, the only long recess that we have is from January to March, 2007. That is also the only time that the Opposition has to go and market themselves, put their house in order so as to be ready for the General Elections. The Government has a lot of achievements. There are programmes which are running all over the country. For example, we have the Constituencies Development Fund projects, roads are being constructed and the Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) is operational. With all these achievements, the Ministers and the Government require ample time to go and tell Kenyans what we are doing for them, launch those programmes, implement what is ongoing and perfect what is not perfect. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to remind those hon. Members, who are fond of running all over the country soliciting for support in one way or the other, that they now have ample time to do this wherever they want to go. This is the only time hon. Members will have to consolidate their gains. They will have enough time to go and defend themselves from their rivals who are already trying to oust them. They will have enough time to gauge themselves. Therefore, we are giving them this opportunity. We have heard leaders here shed crocodile tears, because they do not want to learn from history. The hon. Members seated on the Government side now, were on the Opposition side in the last Parliament. The mess that has been created in this country has been contributed to a larger extent by those hon. Members seated on the Opposition side. Today, they do not want to open a pandora's box. They do not want to tell Kenyans what they failed to do, that this Government is doing. We want to go and tell Kenyans in January, February and March that those Members of Parliament sitting on the Opposition side failed to give them roads, and now we are doing so. We also want to tell them that those people who are now preaching water used to drink wine that created insecurity in this country. We want to have enough time, as a Government, to go and tell Kenyans that we have improved agriculture in this country. We also want to tell them that by the time we came to power, they could not sell their milk, maize or livestock and now we have opened the KMC. We cannot do that in this Chamber. December 7, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 4313 Some hon. Members have argued here that there is a lot of work which is pending. I want to assure this House that there will always be some pending work at any given time. We will go to rest and still leave the work here to be done by others. So, that is not enough argument. If we argue that way, we shall not have time to go to the constituencies and know whether the projects that we started are running properly. On the issue of how we run political parties, we should know where we started. The problem started with those hon. Members seated on the Opposition side. They violated the rules. The former Government appointed Members of the Opposition into the Cabinet. That time, they tossed champagne and nobody raised a finger. Now that they are affected, they are crying foul. What we should do as leaders, is to try and form a committee of Parliament to look at where we went wrong. We have to repent first. We cannot tell Kenyans that we are preaching gospel to them when we have not repented. We must first of all repent in order to preach the \"good news\" to the people of this country. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}