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"id": 283322,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Kajwang",
"speaker_title": "The Minister of State for Immigration and Registration of Persons",
"speaker": {
"id": 164,
"legal_name": "Gerald Otieno Kajwang",
"slug": "otieno-kajwang"
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"content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, when this Commission was proposed sometimes back to be part of our Constitution and have powers to prosecute, I remember I was one of the people who refused and opposed. This is because I said that the powers of prosecution must be given to only one office, which at the time was that of the Attorney General. I said that if we were unsatisfied or thought that the Attorney General did not know or want to do his job, then we could as well have relieved him of his duties and appointed somebody else. I thought that two competing authorities, competing for the sun or to be seen to be prosecuting was not good for this country. I still believe that, that is the correct position. I did not, in fact, support the view that we should have put this Anti-Corruption Authority in our Constitution. This is because I do not think that corruption is a virtue in this country. It is not one of the things that we should constitutionalize. I said so with a lot of passion, but I was in the minority. Mr. Speaker, Sir, now that it has actually been put in our Constitution and we must now operationalize it, I suggest that we do so swiftly. But the Anti-Corruption Authority must do the work for which it has been designed. We did not design the Anti- Corruption Authority to run around on rumours, unsigned letters by “concerned citizens” and say that so-and-so is becoming a millionaire. The Anti-Corruption Authority would be hanging on corridors of very poor people in this country supposedly looking and “smelling” for corruption. That is not why we designed this institution. This institution was to deal with what we call grand corruption. Grand corruption is grand. Grand corruption is designed and executed. Look at a situation in which a Ministry or department is procuring something. The procurement authority is just beginning to do its work and the tenders have not even been floated, but you hear the Anti-Corruption Authority asking questions. When the tenders have been floated and people have not even been shortlisted, the Anti-Corruption Authority is concerned. When short-listing is done the Anti-Corruption is concerned. There are bodies that do a lot of work in this country. The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) looks at whether or not you have paid your taxes. The Efficiency Monitoring Unit (EMU) checks whether or not the Government or a department is functioning well or delivering on targets. There is the Procurement Appeals Board which deals with whether or not the procurement was done properly. You cannot get a job which is not well defined. You waste our money running around the whole country; scaring everybody and doing nothing."
}