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{
    "id": 68443,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/68443/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 306,
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "(Prof. Saitoti): Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to say why I do consider this Report to be both falsehood and full of hearsay. For example, on page 58, they talk about the evidence of a Ms. Marianne Brenner Marten, a director of a body known as BAK Group of Companies, who was supposed to have been liaising with Dr. Ouko for purposes of soliciting funds for the Kisumu Molasses Plant. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you read further, you will find the following statement being made:- “The demand for commissions and kickbacks by Mr. Aslam on behalf of senior Government Ministers, from the Companies of BAK that had been introduced to undertake the revival of the project, contributed a lot to its abandonment and in particular Technit and Italcement” In other words, demands for kickbacks by a Mr. Aslam on behalf of other people, that is already a hearsay. It continues:- “However, hon. Biwott was not alone in this war which was instigated to frustrate Dr. Ouko’s efforts to revive the project and to fight against rampant corruption in the Government of the former President Daniel arap Moi. Indeed, evidence on record points to similar interference from Prof. George Saitoti, the then Minister for Finance. By excluding the deliberations of the Molasses Project from the agenda of the bilateral talks between Kenya and Italy and substituting the same with a project associated with him, it demonstrates the dislike which the two Ministers had developed against the late Minister.” Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, anybody who has been a Minister of Finance or even in another Ministry would know that the agenda between two countries – let us say Kenya and Italy or Kenya and France – is decided at a lower level and it cannot be altered. That is done and the Cabinet is informed. So, the Minister cannot just go at will and remove it. This issue is being brought by those who want to demonstrate that I may have been involved in the death of Dr. Ouko. For those of you who have never known – and I will speak today loudly--- Those who have got institutional memory should remember that at the time Dr. Ouko was killed, I suffered from poisoning and I was totally unconscious. I want to ask this. Those who prepared this Report knew very well that Prof. Saitoti was actually on his deathbed, and I was! This skin you see is not my original skin. If you want I can always bring you a picture. Why did they not find it fit to carry out an investigation to find out why Prof. Saitoti was actually poisoned and Dr. Ouko died? Why is there this kind of selective investigation?"
}