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    "content": "manners of the authoritarian regime, I mean the kind of rules and instruments developed for over 50 years, because one of the reasons we have so many laws is because for every action of the state that was intended to meet certain interests, laws were passed. You have seen Sen. Kiraitu Murungi say here this afternoon that we have as many parastatals as there are plants or crops to be looked after. Specifically, when somebody wanted to focus on a certain commodity, they created a law and an institution called a parastatal, and within the framework of that parastatal, the law could actually tell you who was interested in establishing that parastatal. Madam Temporary Speaker, I will give an example. When I was the Minister for Medical Services, one of the parastatals under me was the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. This is the only parastatal where the President appointed the chairman as well as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). In other parastatals, the President only appoints the chairman and the CEO is appointed by the Minister. But the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital was done that way because of the specific interests that wanted it to exist and the specific powers that wanted certain appointment roles in there. So, we cannot come into the era of devolution and the new Constitution and leave these laws intact. Otherwise, the restructuring of the thing so-called the Provincial Administration will not have taken place. The third thing I want to say, Madam Temporary Speaker – which is extremely important – is that, devolution means that we are creating systems of government that will allow popular participation in the process of governance. In other words, allow people’s participation in that process. People cannot participate in local governance under institutions, laws and regulations that are taken from an authoritarian regime; it is a contradiction in terms. That is why in this process of restructuring the provincial administration, we must create laws and regulations at the local level that will enable popular participation in the process of governance. That means – and I would urge the people going to this Committee to take this very seriously – in the urban areas at the very local level, neighborhood councils must be the fundamental structure of government. In the rural areas, village assemblies – where people meet to discuss affairs of the village – must be the very primary structure of governance in the local areas. In that regard, Madam Temporary Speaker, we cannot continue using such names or nomenclature like chiefs and the assistant chiefs. The word “chief” is very authoritarian. When you are a chief, you are not expected to be questioned; when you are a chief, you sit on a throne. Therefore, even the concept of the word “chief” to be used when talking about local administrators after independence was a big contradiction because the colonial regime needed chiefs as authoritarian characters in the rural areas to lord it over the people. Then we got Independence and we are still using the same words; chief and assistant chief. Obviously, what we experienced during the struggle for multiparty democracy demonstrated who exactly these people were. These people could come to a meeting and just take the microphone from a Member of Parliament, who was popularly elected by the people. This is precisely because to them, the idea of being popularly elected was antithetical to their rule as authoritarian characters at those local levels. So, I think in this process of restructuring the Provincial Administration, all these The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
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