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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I stand here to support the Motion to adopt the two reports. I want to thank very much our Speaker and Parliament for allowing our participation as Members of the Pan African Parliament (PAP). The PAP is faced with financial constraints. Until today, there are some countries in Africa that are not able to send their Members of Parliament to the Pan African Parliament Sessions. I wish to congratulate Mr. Werunga, on behalf of this House, on his appointment as the Clerk of the Pan African Parliament. I also wish to thank the hon. Members of the PAP from this House, and the Southern African Region, for giving support to the selection of Mr. Werunga as the Clerk of the Pan African Parliament. There was a lot of competition, because we had candidates from North Africa and other countries in the South. Now, we are very happy, because the Clerk of that Parliament is a very influential person. He is the person who runs the affairs of that Parliament. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Kenyan team has had a high turnover. For some very interesting reasons, Members of the PAP who were selected at the beginning of our term have consistently been snapped up into the Cabinet. Therefore, we have to replace them each time with Backbenchers. That is why currently we are four instead of being five. I think the party which is responsible for filling the 5th slot needs to be encouraged to do so, so that we can be a complete team the next time we have a Session. I wish to assure this House that the Kenyan team has quality and expertise to participate in the PAP Sessions. There are many challenges, because we Members of the PAP are from different parliaments. Some parliaments are not elected. Other parliaments do not use the procedures we use. Some parliaments follow the Francophone system while others follow the Anglophobe system. We, the African countries that belong to the Commonwealth, have come up with parliamentary procedures. We are trying to get other Members of that Parliament to understand the process of putting business on the Order Paper and how to file Motions. I wish to congratulate the Kenyan Members of Parliament, who have regularly filed Motions and asked Questions, to the extent that the Speaker of the Pan African Parliament noted it. She once asked: \"When will you, Kenyans, stop bringing these Questions and Motions, because you seem to be the only country that does this?\" We should be congratulated; I wish to congratulate my colleagues for being very active. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, the Pan-African Parliament, however wonderful it is, has many teething problems. First, is the high turnover of its Members. This is because there are no permanent Members of that Parliament. Members of that Parliament can only serve as long as they are Members of their national Parliaments. This means that every time we go down to Midrand, we find new Members from whatever country that happens to have had elections that year. Like this 1380 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES June 14, 2006 country, other countries have a very high turnover of Members of parliament. Therefore, we should lobby and ensure that in the next term of the Pan-African Parliament we have permanent Members. This will allow Members of this Parliament to focus on their duties. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other shortcoming is that we Kenyans seem to have difficulties in our linkage with our Executive. We have many times asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs to issue us with diplomatic passports for easier travelling, but nothing is forthcoming. Most of all, we have tried our best to ask for our inclusion in the African Union summit meetings attended by the President. It is fruitless for us to be in the Pan-African Parliament and when our President goes to meetings of the Presidents of the African Union, he does not go with the Kenyan Members of the Pan-African Parliament. This seems to be a problem that we have here in Kenya. All our colleagues in other African countries always accompany their Heads of States to these meetings. Therefore, this issue needs to be looked into. Also the relationship between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Parliament needs to be looked into. Initially, we had difficulties, because we were not recognised as an official delegation in South Africa. It took the intervention of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who talked to our High Commissioner in South Africa. It was embarrassing to the extent that we, as the Kenyan delegation, were not aware of it when our former President came to address the Pan-African Parliament. We just saw him arrive like other delegates. We were chasing after him to say that we were the Kenyan delegates to that Parliament. That was the worst kind of etiquette I had ever seen. If we must do our work, as Members of Parliament, we need to be accorded our official status. Mr. Temporary Deputy, Sir, I also want to say that we are having problems with linkage between our parliaments. I am glad that we are debating these reports now. But there are some documents which have been signed by our Head of State. These documents and conventions need to be ratified, or to be approved, by this House, but there is no communication to that effect. For instance, the Protocol on Women Rights was signed by President Kibaki along with other Presidents in 2003. Yet, up to today this country has not ratified that protocol. When we asked the Minister for Sports, Gender and Social Services about it, he told us that the Cabinet had not yet approved it, and that it is only the Cabinet that can ratify it. So, what happens is that we go to the Pan-African Parliament and find that we are lagging behind in ratifying protocols. We were not able to explain to our colleagues from other parliaments, why we, in this House, are not able to effect what has been agreed by our Heads of State. These issues need to be addressed. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, finally, I think the Pan African Parliament faces financial challenges. I am saying this because this Parliament, like the African Union, is owned by Africans. Our membership is African, but we really must be able to liberate ourselves from donor funding and donor dependency. It is true that in the Second Session of the Pan-African Parliament I filed a Motion on reparations. It asked our Heads of States to set up a committee with immediate effect at our secretariat in Addis Ababa to determine what kind of reparations need to come to us from those countries that colonised us. Until today, when we have gone through our Third and Fourth Sessions, my Motion has never been put on the Order Paper. I received a formal letter from the Speaker of the Pan-African Parliament, which advised me that the matter was sensitive. That letter went against all the rules of procedure of the House, and I have not been able to see that Motion. Now, I wish to ask: How independent we are? Are we still owned by the West, even at the level of the Pan-African Parliament, because we need donor money to set up our institutions? These are challenges that we must address. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}