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"id": 66223,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/66223/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. ole Ntimama",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for State for National Heritage and Culture",
"speaker": {
"id": 200,
"legal_name": "William Ronkorua ole Ntimama",
"slug": "william-ntimama"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. I have always chosen to sit at this dark corner and that is probably why you have not been noticing me. Anyway, thank you very much, indeed. This House, the Judiciary and the Executive are three arms of an Executive Government and no one arm can sit to overrule or undermine the other. That is what democracy is all about. Although my friend, hon. Kimunya, has said that the Judiciary has lost fame or something like that, I do not know about that. First, of all, I want to thank you, Mr. Speaker, for your decision which has cooled tempers in the country. Thank you very much. You know very well that I always have a lot of respect for you. I do not know whether we are really carrying all the reputation of the people of this country as a House. You will remember very well that last year, the Media was full of reports that we have a few Members in this House who are supposed to be mouths for hire. It was put very clearly that we have a few Members in this House who are pointed out as mouths for hire. Of late, I have been wondering because I have watched people sponsoring Motions in this House and, at least, one or two Motions went straight to suggest that there was tribalism in them. They clearly went to suggest that there was favouritism and reasons to try and exonerate certain people, outside or inside this House, of wrong doings and stealing, as a matter of fact. It has not been really very good. I congratulated Prof. Saitoti. The other day he said that the Motion on the Ambassador for the United States of America should not be debated in the House because it had not been discussed in diplomatic circles and could have brought a lot of crash between this country and the United States of America. These are the little things that go wrong when we pass these Motions. You could see that the sponsors were ganging up for trouble. I have been watching these things very carefully and I think that if we are not very careful, we will plunge this country into a constitutional crisis. I have observed that certain groups in this country want to subvert the Constitution, a good Constitution that we have passed with a lot of pain, which came out to be the best in the region and even in Africa as a whole. I have also observed that there are small groups, and very dangerous groups too, which want to scuttle the Coalition. We have not forgotten the red brigade during the campaign for the referendum. They are still there and are working. They still want to subvert this Constitution. We must, as the people, watch them, point at them and not forget them because they are there. They are having meetings all over this town for only one big reason, namely, to subvert the Constitution of this country. We must not allow them to do so. I was very worried the other day because when House Committees were given the responsibility to make a decision as to whether the Judicial nominations were constitutional or unconstitutional. Before they started meeting, there were statements from some Members of the Committees. This indicated very clearly that they were going to talk about tribes and parties. They were not going to sit down and see whether the nominations were constitutional. They had already made statements. I do not know whether we are going to get a fair Judicial report from these Committees because they are already divided between tribes and parties. It is very clear. We are probably going to get a situation which is going to be murkier than what we have today, as a country. Mr. Speaker, Sir, you have a responsibility, and a big one for that, because even the Constitution allows you to run this country if everything else fails. The most important thing is for you to make a real decision to try and put this country together, because we are completely asunder. There are too many things happening in this country. We know very well that for a long time, we have never been as divided as we are today. We have a lot of people who want to divide this country for their own interests. I can see things are not really going right because, as somebody said here, there is already a conflict between the Judiciary and the Executive; when those two arms of Government should actually be working together for the sake of the country. The decision by the High Court on the recent appointments goes contrary to what the Executive is saying, and it is very dangerous indeed. I do not want to say much. My friend, Mr. Mutula Kilonzo is here. We were talking about shuttle diplomacy just a few minutes ago, but I do not remember the Cabinet approving that shuttle diplomacy. At my age, I am not supposed to tell lies. That is what my elders in Narok say. I never knew of such a decision by the Cabinet. I have never been, in many cases, absent from Cabinet meetings. Therefore, I want to say that if everything else has to go wrong, let us go back to the people. Let us have a referendum for the people, so that we can see the truth of how our people are thinking because, listening to them shows very clearly that they are dissatisfied with the way things are running right now. Things are tribal. There are many caucuses in the city today, sitting all over little hotels, trying to influence the Committee Members, and I am very worried. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir."
}