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"content": "This Senate has a lot to do. When a parent is given Kshs3,000 for bursary, they come straight to the Senators to supplement but we do not have it. I pity people like Sang; you are not in the sky team, so you start suffering and running away from home. Those in the sky team are busy knocking on parastatal doors saying: “Give me money or you leave the office tomorrow”. This Senate has a unique opportunity to bring sanity and sense to the country. I want to urge you, colleagues, that let us come together and audit how the funds in the counties are being spent. We are sending enough money to the counties to even build churches. There is no point for your constituents to come to you for money to repair a water borehole or a cattle dip. I am sure you are routinely asked to do that. This is simply because somebody somewhere is not doing the right thing. When you say something, they will say: “Senator kama amechoka akuje tung’ang’ane hii kiti”. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I want to urge Kenyans that harambees are good but we must stop abusing them. I remember, and I said in the Motion when we were debating, during our days as young lawyers, there was a young female magistrate who organized a harambee to get married. She called in all lawyers, arranged some crook who sat next to her in a suit smiling broadly as an intended groom. People donated money but two months down the line, any lawyer who went at the Chamber would say: “Sorry, Madam, I did not come for the harambee” and he would be told: “It is still open just bring your contribution”. There was no intention of marriage, the crook who sat next to the lady was not even her boyfriend but just a crook used to get money. If things can happen at that level, imagine two young people, I cannot call them distinguished but crooked, fleecing lawyers who have cases in the court. They would go to court and say: “ Mimi niMvita and I missed your harambee.” Then he would be told: “It is not closed, leta tu ”. That is called corruption and it eats away society. We must check it and arrest and control the situation. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I can tell you for free that there is no country anywhere in the world that develops on harambees. Countries develop on clearly defined laid down development programmes, harnessing and utilizing resources from the economy, accounting for those resources, auditing the use of those resources and holding those who abuse the resources to account. There is a country called South Korea, in terms of corruption index, it is quite up there. In this country, once you are caught, it does not matter your station in life. If you read newspapers you saw last year a former President of South Korea drove to a cliff, leaped into the sea and died because they were catching up with him for his corrupt activities when he was the President. This is a president of a country and not a jockey club. This country must also destroy the sanctuaries of corruption. It is difficult to completely eliminate corruption. In China, if you are charged with smuggling, they bring the court at your shop, try you, convict and hang you on a lamp post outside your shop as a deterrent. If you are sentenced to a firing squad, they will shoot you and pass the cost of the bullet to your family to pay for it. We do not want to go that draconian way but sometimes extra-ordinary difficulties require extra-ordinary measures to control. In this country when you listen to people, even in this Chamber, very few people talk to you about earning money, they only talk about making money. They talk about deals. A deal is an ordinary English word but it has some very serious negative connotations. A deal is 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."
}