HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 38461,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/38461/?format=api",
"text_counter": 311,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Midiwo",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 184,
"legal_name": "Washington Jakoyo Midiwo",
"slug": "jakoyo-midiwo"
},
"content": "Thank you, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker. I stand to support this Bill. I want to begin by thanking hon. Mungatana for living to his promise of trying to make us have an orderly way of vetting. This is a new thing for our people. It is very important to understand that the power has gone to the people of Kenya and from now on, all of us, public officers, will have to be vetted in totality. Many of us get in Public Service as ordinary people and a couple of years later, we are so different that we cannot even be deformed to our original form. The public needs to know that process. The members of the public need to know the people they want to trust and entrust their affairs with. The biggest thing that this Bill will do is to right the current mess. What is happening today in the vetting process, like what happened during our last vetting, is that there is a team chosen to vet officers other than the Judicial Service Commission. Even in the Judicial Service Commission, the ranking system which has been introduced is corrupted. If you see the actual documents, you find that if a Luo is there and an applicant is a Luo, they rank him the highest. If a Kisii is there and there is a Kisii applicant, the person sitting in the vetting panel ranks him the highest. In other words, we have imported tribalism into our boardrooms. What needs therefore to happen is that the questions need to be asked in public so that Kenyans can see what is so special about that Luo applicant that is not in the Kikuyu applicant. We have to face this mess that we are in. This is what Kenyans have been trying to face. In the end, the result shall be that all Kenyans, regardless of their majorities in terms of tribe, shall have a fair chance because there are Kenyans who are minorities, but definitely are qualified to do jobs like the majorities. Conversely, there are Kenyans who are the majorities and qualified, but even amongst them, you find very many crooks. We are faced with a scenario where we need a Bill that forces compliance to the Articles of the Constitution that require public vetting. We need to do these things in public. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I am of the view that the Parliamentary Committee which has been doing the vetting, be it the Namwamba Committee or the Abdikadir Committee, that have some experience away from our country, should conduct vetting in public and those Committees have to be commended. They have done an excellent job. They have brought the things which Kenyans want to hear about nominees because nomination should not be a rubber stamp. There is something else that this Bill also needs to cure and I want to plead with hon. Mungatana. A committee is a committee of Parliament and there is no way a Committee can go and write a negative recommendation on a nominee and Parliament overrules it for the sake of it without proper investigation. There needs to be a way of ensuring that if there is anything negative about a nominee, the investigative authorities are given time to investigate. We have nothing to fear as a country since we have chosen to go this route. In the end, we shall have a good country if we are led by good and honest public servants. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, there is fear that when people are subjected to public hearing, so much comes out that is negative about them. I have seen that the police do not want the things that came out about the Chief Justice and the Deputy Public Prosecutor to come. I am sorry; they will have to go through public vetting. This is the path that we have chosen unless we change our Constitution. We have to do that. In future, this Bill will take away all the other political Committees which are corrupting this process. We have now taken away the power of the President to perform his duty. This Bill will then once and for all give the President power to nominate. In nominating, the President shall inform the nominee that: “I wish to make you the Secretary of Health”, for example, “do you wish to take up the job and will you be able to withstand public hearing?” That is a personal decision, but immediately a nominee jumps into the ring, I do not think that we should worry what to say. It is through public pronouncements of what we have heard and what we know about the nominees that we will be able, as a country, to know, unearth or uncover the rot amongst some of our public servants."
}