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{
    "id": 643567,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/643567/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 173,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Midiwo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 184,
        "legal_name": "Washington Jakoyo Midiwo",
        "slug": "jakoyo-midiwo"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Deputy Speaker. I rise to support the extension, but with a very heavy heart. I support it because that particular Board would be leaving a messy and unclean house. It is important for us to reflect on the thinking of the drafters of our Constitution in terms of the establishment of those vetting boards. I do not believe that what we are being treated to was the intention of our Constitution. I do not believe that vetting was supposed to victimise Kenyans. I believe that the new Constitution was supposed to give all and sundry a new beginning. If you look at the work of that particular Board, more qualified people have gone home in a way that was not intended by the Constitution. One judge was sent home because he or she made a ruling so many years ago which was of a political nature. They could have been wrong. A new Constitution meant that rulings are now made under the new Constitution. A ruling made under the old Constitution should not have sent a judge home. What have we achieved? We have experienced Kenyans like Justice Bosire and Justice Onyango Otieno who have been sent home. The list is endless because the vetting became subjective. It was based on who you like or who you have seen. It is a shameful embarrassment both to that Board and, more particularly, to the one that is purporting to be vetting police officers. What has happened to the men and women in uniform in this country is not acceptable. Why have we allowed a society where a new beginning was envisaged, but only a few are expected to have that new beginning? If what is happening to judges and policemen was to happen in this House, many of us should have been vetted, if that was the purpose and intention of the Constitution. I know it was not. We should give them three months to clean up. If you talk to some of the people from the Judiciary who have been victimised, they will tell you that so and so on the Board just did not like them. That cannot be allowed to happen. We have expanded the Judiciary to include younger and more vibrant members of the Bench. However, corruption has instead shot up. You saw what happened in the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC). Younger members of the opposition joined the Government and became more corrupt. People who had been fighting Moi for many years joined the NARC Government. If you see them now, they are always in and out of court. That was not the change we envisaged. It is personal change and the Constitution is a piece of paper with a message which is supposed to be internalised. It is supposed to give us a new way of living. The Government - which is our first Government under the new Constitution - is one that abets corruption so that when you say that the Judiciary is corrupt, then it is a reflection of the Executive. It is what is allowed as a norm and practice of the day. Whatever we are trying to do must begin from the leadership of the country. We will have to do so much to change our country. But I am of the feeling that the experiment we are doing is a bad one that shall never 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."
}