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{
    "id": 386235,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/386235/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 64,
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    "content": "itself was delivered. President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto were elected on the platform of being youthful and digital. It was so disappointing to see the President going through the same ritualistic way as has been done by the previous presidents, reading pages and pages of speeches. We expected that as a digital President--- I expected to see him with an iPad or making some power point presentation. So, let him lead from the front. He is a digital President and he has to demonstrate that he is so and not just in words. My second disappointment with the Speech, and I think this has been mentioned by the previous speakers, is the way the President addressed the issue of corruption. To me, the President did not come out very clearly to give us his clear policy and vision on how he will tackle the issue of corruption in our Government. We all know that corruption is one of the vices that has brought our economy to its knees. We all felt the devastating effects of corruption in our Government. Therefore, this is a vice that must be dealt with very firmly by this new administration. We have seen previous administrations giving lip service to the fight against corruption, but we expect a deviation from that. We want to see the President and his administration dealing very firmly with corruption. We want to see some heads rolling. I want to believe that even if it did not come out very strongly in his Speech, in his programmes, he will put this as a priority; the fight against corruption. Otherwise, I want to state that the Speech was good and reconciliatory. We saw the President coming out to extend an olive branch to his opponents in the last elections. He emphasized on the need for all Kenyans to work together. Therefore, I think the Speech was reconciliatory and that is starting on a very good point. I believe that he means well. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the President shared with the House and Kenyans his development agenda and laid down the nine pillars of his administration. I picked up the issue of food security. There is no nation that can develop when its citizens are hungry. Food security should be priority number one for this administration. This is what China did and that is why they are where they are. You can talk of super highways and development of all infrastructures that you want to talk about. but as long as the people are hungry, this development means nothing. Therefore, I want to support him on the issue of making Kenya food secure. It is very important and I want to hail the whole idea of setting aside one million acres of land to increase food production. I want to support the idea of modernizing and mechanizing agriculture, but we should go further than that and come up with a clear policy on supply of fertilizer and seeds to our farmers. This has been a big problem to our farmers, particularly in Trans Nzoia and the western part of this country where I come from. The fertilizer and seed prices are so prohibitive. We hope that the Government can come up with the policy to subsidize the cost of these inputs so that we can increase production and make Kenya self-sufficient in food supply. Secondly, if we want to encourage these farmers, we need to come up with the policy to do value addition to whatever products that are produced in various areas. I want to see the Government coming up with small-scale to middle-scale industries so that farmers can get ready markets for their produce and get value for it. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other issue that I picked from the Presidential Address is the issue of unemployment. The previous administrations have given lip 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."
}