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{
    "id": 319504,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/319504/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 292,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dr. Eseli",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 141,
        "legal_name": "David Eseli Simiyu",
        "slug": "david-eseli"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, thank you for this chance to contribute to this very important amendment Bill. The adage is: “If it ain’t broken, don’t mend it”. Here we are trying to mend something that is not broken. Instead we are trying to introduce problems. We have examples in this country. Some of us are stuck in this attitude that every organization must have a chairman, a CEO and things like that. We have eyes and we do not see. We have corporations and organizations with chairmen and CEOs who quarrel and things become very bad. You can imagine if that were to happen at the CBK. That would send very bad signals to the financial world. We have good examples. Right now we are dealing with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) where the CEO and the chairman are in two centres of power. We have just heard the Prime Minister answering questions on the issues of the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA). Recently, we saw it happening at the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF), where the CEO and the chairman were not seeing eye to eye and were pulling left, right and centre, yet we want to create this at a premier organization of this country, the CBK? I think there, we will be blind. We should never attempt that sort of thing. If we are to enact any legislation, it should not be enacted just because some people, perhaps, do not like the holder of the office; if we do not like the current holder of that office, there are mechanisms of removing that holder, but you do not throw out the baby with the bath water. This should not be allowed to happen. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I believe that while the Bill might contain certain good things, we need to amend it carefully, because we cannot have two people both of them with good financial management experience, but totally with different views. Just as with lawyers there are as many opinions as there are lawyers. Similarly, in financial transactions, some people believe doing things in different ways. If you have a chairman whose views are different from those of the Governor, then that will be a recipe for disaster. While this amendment Bill might have some good intentions, some of them look like they might set up the country for a very rough time in future and create jobs for people, who are known to certain people only. While I support the rest of the Bill, that particular part will have to be amended to make it more useful to us in this country since the CBK has not been grossly out of step with the country’s ambitions in development. If those ambitions on development have so far been fulfilled to a certain extent, and there are any amendments, they should be able to improve it and not take us a step backwards. With those few remarks, I support but wish to amend that particular section."
}