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"id": 421933,
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"speaker_name": "Sen. Ongoro",
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"legal_name": "Elizabeth Ongoro Masha",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir. I rise to support this Motion. I would like to congratulate the Mover, Sen. G.G. Kariuki, for bringing this very serious Motion to the Senate. I listened to him moving the Motion and I was impressed by his articulation on matters security. I realised that this is a man who has been there and who has seen it all. He has been a Minister for Provincial Administration and Internal Affairs at one point. Therefore, this Motion could not have been brought by a better person, at a better time. Security is the central pillar that holds a nation together. Everything else that we work hard for; excellent infrastructure, enough resources, good GDP and so on, without security can become useless. We have witnessed very strong economies that have come down in a matter of days after they lost their grip on matters security. So, this is a central focal point for any serious Government, any nation and for any community. I think this is the right time that this committee should be set up. It should be a very serious Committee. My suggestion is that this Committee should be constituted, not only of legislators, but should have representations from all the major organs and arms of Government so that we can, in one platform, come up with recommendations. I will not repeat what has been discussed by my fellow Senators. However, I want to draw your attention to something that has always escaped our attention. These are the different kinds of insecurity and violations. We keep on referring to the physical insecurity issues. However, there are other very serious issues. We have psychological violence, emotional and economic crimes meted upon the people of this nation. When you have one person taking off with Kshs20 million in a fraudulent manner, that becomes an economic crime that costs lives and which denies people the opportunity to get good health and infrastructure and anything else that the money could have done. The tragedy is that our criminal justice system has never impressed me. The real criminals, those who commit real crimes, still go scot free and we punish, with a lot of strength, one hungry Kenyan who stole a chicken from his neighbour to go and slaughter for his children who were dying of hunger. One person who has taken Kshs7 billion in one day gets away with it and is even accorded State security. In my opinion, we, as a nation, need to address the root causes of insecurity and not the symptoms. We have dealt with the symptoms for very many years. It is now time that we dealt with the root causes. Why do we have insecurity? As long as our youth are unemployed, we will not be dealing with insecurity. As long as we have very qualified people who are underemployed, we cannot deal with insecurity. For as long as this country has limited resources to be shared amongst very many people, there will always be matters that are perceived to be of injustice in terms of resource distribution. For as long as we have persistently and consciously refused to deal with historical injustices, especially matters that touch on land and other injustices that were meted before, whose consequences generations have had to suffer, then we are not addressing insecurity. The way forward, I suggest, in dealing with the root causes, is to look at bridging the gap between the rich and the poor. Of course, I cannot go into detail of that but there 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."
}