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{
    "id": 518934,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/518934/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 79,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ababu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 108,
        "legal_name": "Ababu Tawfiq Pius Namwamba",
        "slug": "ababu-namwamba"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Speaker. Because this matter has been directly made to arise out of a Committee I chair, it will be only fair and proper that I be allowed an opportunity to contribute to this ventilation. Right from the outset, let me say that this is really a fantastic opportunity for this House to deal with this matter of integrity head on, away from noises in the media, speculation and rumours along the corridors of this Parliament Buildings and elsewhere. Hon. Speaker, I do hold the view that we bear responsibility both to ourselves as members of this 11th Parliament and also to future generations which shall occupy this space. We should not waste this historic opportunity to put this matter in its correct context and deal with these issues dispassionately away from political brinkmanship. Allow me just to mention a few things as my way of contributing to the guidance we expect from the Chair. Number one, you as an attorney, a lawyer and as a legislator of no mean repute, you know that there is nowhere in any principles of law where we assign communal culpability or responsibility. Communities and groups do not commit crimes but individuals do. Therefore, my first point is that it will be manifestly unfair to attempt to condemn a whole membership, either of a committee or of this House, merely on account of an allegation that is directed or is connected to a particular individual. Let us be careful to assign responsibility to individuals and not to groups. So to purport to say, for instance, that you could disband a Committee of this House, which by the way, there is absolutely no Standing Order, we are a House of rules, that gives anybody any power to disband a Committee of this House unless you are going to make fresh Standing Orders and apply them retrospectively. Please look at the culpability and the responsibility of individuals and not of groups. Do not condemn Members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) as a group."
}