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    "id": 306858,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/306858/?format=api",
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    "content": "the rule of law is a basic thing that you must follow. You cannot be a Minister who is also a legislator who creates the law and then you are the same public servant jumping the red light on the highway, or taking wrong route because you have a flag, or you do not want to be searched at the airport because you are a mheshimiwa. That is the rule of law and it must cut across everybody. There are issues here to do with public trust, responsibility, performance, and professionalism. As my colleagues have mentioned here, the three major enemies of leaders--- Sometimes you ask yourself: After being a public servant or a leader, do you really have a job after your service? In Africa and particularly in Kenya, nobody wants to touch a politician after his job. Today, when we are vetting judges, commissioners and public servants, the first thing you are asked: Were you a Member of Parliament before? If you were a Member of Parliament, you are automatically disqualified. After leaving the public service as a Member of Parliament, you are disqualified. So, Members of Parliament have become extinct and endangered because of the basic framework that we miss in our leadership. However, the biggest three, and I agree with my colleagues, Martha Karua and Wetangula, are corruption--- We are tagged and branded. Even if you are a clean person, because you were a public servant and a politician, you will be termed corrupt. You could be innocent and doing things in good faith, but somebody will think that you must be having something under your sleeves. Corruption is key. The second one is impunity; abuse of office and the way we run things; that is, having no human feeling on any subject that we engage in. That is why the word “politician” is becoming a dangerous tag on any one of us. Can we trust a politician? I am new in this game, although ten years does not make you new. I find it very difficult to start reconciling the element of compromise. When you have principles and you are supposed to compromise them for the sake of politics, then you have no principles. You have an ideology that is leftist or rightist and then you form a coalition of the centre, where is your principle? You have no principle! Those are the issues that I have a problem with. Those of us who are going to bring amendments at the Committee Stage should look at this as critical. There are many things that are mentioned in this Bill that are of concern. I want to use one or two of them, particularly, financial integrity. Of late, many people have got their wealth through dubious means and now they think that because of the agony and poverty in Kenyans, they can walk in with their blood wealth and buy people out. I want to ask Kenyans all over the country not to accept money for their votes. Dubious people will come here. The law will not be for the poor, but for the rich. It will be for the elite. The law will be for the privileged. The ordinary mwananchi who wants to make a decent life will not have the advantage of being defended and protected in this House."
}