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{
    "id": 492014,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/492014/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 302,
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    "content": "to be called, Kaeni Chini. For a long time, I have not watched any movie. The last movie that I saw, the reminiscent, exactly like what I saw when I was a young man sitting out in the darkness watching on a screen was played out live by men, not called Johney Wayne or James Bond, but men with African names and specifically Kamba names from the County of Makueni. They were shooting from the hip like it is done in the movies. If we do not act now, this scene will be replayed. It will put this country on the deathbed. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, if we look at what is happening in the county assemblies, budgets in these assemblies have not yet been passed. If what we have heard from the Senator of Isiolo County can be likened to what is happening to other counties, this is a sad scenario. The other day, in the County Assembly of Trans Nzoia, we saw and read in the newspapers when one of the officials, the Speaker, who was also going to be impeached, had rejected and refused the verdict of the county assembly. He went and locked himself in an office with the mace so that he could not be impeached. What followed was a drama that only history has been left to document. The entire County Assembly of Trans Nzoia went and forcefully broke into the Speaker’s office to carry the mace and impeach him. That is how badly we have gone in this country. When I say devolution has become the theatre of the absurd which is led by the trusted actors of devolution, we have heard in this House all the complaints, lamentations and contributions of my fellow Senators especially on what has happened in the courts of law. Suffice to say that the Council of Governors is ruling through the courts. They are having their way through the courts. Did you see today after injunctions have been issued against this House from summoning governors, now it has gone so bad, so down to the roots, that, in fact, there is an injunction which was issued today that CECs cannot be summoned by the county assemblies? That is how it is going in devolution. We seriously need radical action. I do not want to emulate the Chief Whip of Kwale, but I say that desperate times call for desperate measures. In calling on the Senate to act as has been called by Sen. Billow, I want to remind this House that a few years ago, the late Michael Jackson sang the song: Man in the Mirror. I do not know if any of us has had a chance to listen to that song. He says in that song that he stood in front of the mirror and asked the man in the mirror to change his ways. In my background, as a businessman before I came to this Senate, that is precisely what I would be telling the Senate today. I will be brief on this because I am a Senator like all of us and it affects me equally. The question I would like to ask ourselves as Senators is: Have we done enough to claim our space in a competitive arena? We came into this House and expected that the goodwill of everybody else will carry us forward. Although we have lamented and complained about the courts, I want to remind this House that when we went to find and have our way in the Supreme Court, indeed, we had. We have made our complaints and especially on the sensitive matter on the ruling and reinstatement of Governor Wambora back to his position. But we also need to be truthful to ourselves and remember that it is on record that in that matter of Governor Wambora, we did not have representation as a Senate. If you remember the last judgment that was given, the injunction which stopped the formation of the County Development Boards, part of the ruling by the judge was the absence of representation of the Senate in those proceedings. The judge went ahead and"
}