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{
    "id": 459423,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/459423/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 579,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Eng.) Gumbo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 24,
        "legal_name": "Nicholas Gumbo",
        "slug": "nicholas-gumbo"
    },
    "content": "hon. Members of this House to be kidnapped before we take action? Do we want members of the Executive to be kidnapped before we take action? Let us empower the police. I believe that, compared to where we were before 2010 and the period between when we brought in the NPSC and the NPS and today, Kenya was better placed in the former period. As I 1said before, the existing structure, where we cannot hold Cabinet Secretaries to account directly is not tenable. We may have put it in our Constitution but for me, it is a fundamental error. We have to review the Constitution because laws are made for people, and not the other way round. We seem to have a Constitution that is wordy. It tries to take care of everything but in the end, it takes care of nothing. Is that the way we want to go? As a country, we owe it to the people we represent here to do something. We are trying to blame the police officers. What are they supposed to do? I did a course in management. It says that in management, before you assign a task to an employee, you should give him the right tools. Are we giving our police officers the right tools? Why are we blaming them? What about the clashes that have come up? With respect to governance issues, again, look at policing in the counties. We have a County Commander in charge of the Administration Police (AP) and a County Commander in charge of the regular police. We then have another officer of the same rank as the County Commander. Who is supposed to give orders to whom? We need to do more than just pass these amendments, if we want to improve policing in this country. Otherwise, what we are doing through these amendments today is mere sugar-coating. It will take us nowhere. Kenyans will continue to die. Criminals are taking over the country. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, how does it feel when you read in the newspapers that a criminal causally walked to a car and shot an innocent Kenyan; like they did to my good friend, Francis Gathua? They shot an innocent man who was walking from work while policemen were there trying to control traffic. Policemen do not have the necessary tools that can see criminals who kill Kenyans. They are helpless. What are we making these amendments for, if it is not to improve policing? I am afraid we are not achieving anything. I ask my colleagues to re-look at the entire constitutional framework. Some of the best governed countries in the world have constitutions which can fill only five pages on an A4 paper. This voluminous constitution we have is quickly proving to be meaningless and we have to re-look at it as leaders and see areas where we went wrong. It is human to err. We may have made mistakes, but we need to look at it globally not through piecemeal changes like what we are trying to do. With those remarks, I strongly oppose because it is of no consequence as far as I am concerned. We need more comprehensive review of all the laws that affect security in this country."
}