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{
"id": 484009,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/484009/?format=api",
"text_counter": 110,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Minority Leader",
"speaker": {
"id": 210,
"legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
"slug": "moses-wetangula"
},
"content": " Mr. Speaker, Sir, this is a very critical Motion for this Chamber. It may easily turn out to be a trial of this Senate. The new Constitution has brought on board new expectations, new responsibilities, and new associations. It can be likened to Ghana where because a President has a running mate tied together like Siamese twins, when you enter office, you cannot sack your deputy and you must work together. What happened in Ghana is that President Jerry Rawlings, having been unable to push out his deputy, resorted to routinely boxing him in Cabinet meetings with a hope that he would resign and go home. The deputy declined to resign and hang on to the end of the term. Mr. Speaker, Sir, in Malawi, the President even expelled his deputy from the party with a hope that she would get frustrated, resign and go. As fate would have it, a few months later, the President died in office and the mistreated deputy became the President. Here in Kenya, our governors must be advised that where you took a running mate, you took him or her for good or for worse, you will sit and work together for five years. We see a situation where a governor who does not like his deputy can easily resort to underhand manouvres to engineer an impeachment so that he can get somebody he can work with. This Senate will be failing if we rubberstamped this mischief. The case of Machakos is an open page. In law, we say, you can take judicial notice. In the Bible Jesus said, the signs of the times are clear, those with eyes can see, those with ears can hear and that is Machakos for you today. We have listened to the distinguished Senator for Mombasa and I quickly flipped through this Report but with a lot of care. While I thank the Committee and its Members for agreeing to take the task of the House and sitting for long hours to bring a report to the House, we did not expect them to bring any report. We expected them to bring a report; a report that gives a clear reasoned analysis of evidence placed before it, taking into account the judicial notice that I have talked about and inform the House of their reasoned conclusion. I want to inform my good friend, the distinguished Senator for Kiambu, that the Committee is an agent of the House and it does not bind the House. The decision belongs to this House. We can agree or disagree with the Committee because it is our entitlement as the Senate of the Republic of Kenya. The conduct of the Governor of Machakos has not helped this case either. I talked to one of the distinguished Members of the Committee and he told me what was on trial did not turn out to be whether the Deputy Governor should be impeached but the exposition of the rot that is Machakos County. This Senate has a duty and we must discharge it. Since when, and this is uncontroverted, would witnesses in an impeachment proceedings go, depone and execute affidavits in the office of the Governor? That stinks. Even if the Governor wanted to knock out his deputy, not through the Rawlings way, but in the manner he chose to do, he could have been more tactful. He could have done things differently. Since everybody knows that the Governor was the engineer and architect in chief of this impeachment, why did he not come to testify before the Committee? 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."
}