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{
    "id": 492895,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/492895/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 202,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Kanyua",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 981,
        "legal_name": "Priscilla Nyokabi Kanyua",
        "slug": "priscilla-nyokabi-kanyua"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Speaker. Allow me to also contribute to this discussion on appearance before the House by Cabinet Secretaries. Let me start by thanking the Assembly here for having allowed the Nyeri Members of the County Assembly to join and be part of the Speaker’s Gallery and to watch this debate. Indeed, we are hoping that after this, the county assemblies will follow suit. The county executives will also have to go the same way that the Cabinet Secretaries are meant to go. When we start with the question of accountability as a national value, in the Constitution that we passed everybody is required to be accountable. It is, indeed, ironical that everybody is using the Constitution to escape accountability. The Constitution that was in itself meant to cause and increase accountability in our country, has become a tool for people to use to escape accountability. We have the case of governors and now we have the case of Cabinet Secretaries who want to escape accountability when it is a national value. On the CIC, and many lawyers as well as everybody in the country knows it, the Constitution is not a text book at all. You cannot read the Constitution in black and white and say that “this is what the Constitution says and this what the constitution does not say”. The Constitution is a framework law, a legislation that guides the country, a living document that you interpret and implement as you go along. Our Constitution is very young, just four years old having been passed in 2010. We cannot read it cover to cover the way CIC seems to be doing. A Constitution is a people’s aspiration. It is a means to an end. It is not an end in itself. This Constitution must deliver us to development. We cannot read the Constitution and remain a poor country for the rest of our lives; we have to read this Constitution and move our economy and our country forward. How do we do that? We need to have purposive interpretation of the Constitution. We need to actually ask CIC to wake up and interpret this Constitution purposively. If you look at the question of Cabinet Secretaries coming to this House, we have raised Statements here before. I did raise a Statement on the question of sanitary towels and girls failing to go to school because of lack of sanitary towels. I received an answer from hon. (Ms.) S.W. Chege, my friend the Chair of Committee on Education, Research and Technology. I was in shock to hear that 23000 students from my own county have received sanitary towels. Nobody has seen those sanitary towels, nobody saw them arriving. I have never met a single beneficiary; I have never gone to a single school where they admitted that they had received those sanitary towels. I cannot push my friend, hon. (Ms) S. W. Chege to give further details on where the sanitary towels were delivered because she would not know. The only person who would be able to answer this question is the Cabinet Secretary in charge of Education, Prof. Kaimenyi. He is the one who can explain the issue. A Member of Parliament here, even though being a Chair cannot answer those questions. So, every time we raise a Statement here, it is not answered. Kenyans are not answered and the budget process will show that Kshs. 400 million has been spent on sanitary towels in this country. We want to ensure that whatever programmes Cabinet Secretaries have put in place, benefit our counties. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}