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{
    "id": 572274,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/572274/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 239,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Today, America being the free world leader, being the home of freedom, democracy and liberty is coming to Kenya. I hope that we are going to pick a few lessons from this. Our democratic space is shrinking, our disrespect for constitutional institutions is widening, and our disrespect for institutions like Parliament is more evident. Parliament itself is not conducting itself in a manner that bestows the respect it deserves and so on and so forth. As the President of the United States of America comes to Kenya, we all say: Karibu . We as the alternative leadership in the country are happy and proud that my brothers Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka and my sister Martha Karua and myself will have an opportunity to exchange views and ideas with President Obama on how our country is run and how things are being done or not being done, but for the betterment of the country. This country has challenges. We need cooperation and collaboration with the United States of America and other countries, to fight terrorism. We need to secure our country and the region. We need to partner with Americans and others to help South Sudan, Somalia and Burundi. We need to grow the economies of the East African Community. That is why I welcome the conference that is taking place in Nairobi that will be addressed on Saturday by President Obama. It is a window of opportunity to showcase Kenya; what we are and what we can do and even do better. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I call upon Kenyans that our contradictions notwithstanding, our colleagues in the leadership of Jubilee starting with President Uhuru Kenyatta should not look at the visit of President Obama as a gift to them. It is not! He is coming to his father’s country. He is coming to visit the people of this country. I saw some bizarre tweet that President Obama is coming to Kenya because of the successful foreign policy being carried out by the Jubilee regime. How fallacious! The Jubilee regime has no foreign policy. They live on a day to day experience; where is the flag blowing? That is where they look. Where is it blowing? That is where they look. They just operate on an ad hoc basis. When Obama comes to Kenya as the President of the United States of America, we all are patriotic Kenyans. We want to talk about things that make Kenya a better place to live in. So, when we are going to talk about the endemic corruption in this country, it is not because we are besmirching our motherland, it is because we want Kenya to be a corruption free society. Even from Washington, President Obama himself has said that he will talk about corruption because he knows that it is there. When we talk about insecurity, it is not because we like our country any less than others; it is because we feel the pain that insecurity is visiting on our country. The death of students, quarry workers, imams in Mombasa and so on, pains us equally. When we talk about enlarging the space of democracy, reforms at the IEBC, respect of the judiciary, respect of institutions of governance like the EACC, it is because we want this country to be better. It is not because we like this country lesser than others. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I want to end by saying that I have personally in the past interacted with President Obama. He is a very consencious person, brilliant, very articulate and very outward looking on world issues. He is not coming here to sanitize anybody. Some people are behaving as if he is coming here to give a stamp of authority 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."
}