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{
    "id": 722099,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/722099/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 82,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "February 23, 2017 SENATE DEBATES 11 Sen. Kembi-Gitura",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, I rise to support the Committee. I hear Sen. Bule and may not agree with him on several issues. All of us are Senators and people are nominated actually through their parties and so that is not anything new. The only point I would want to make here is that, like I have stood on the Floor of this Senate and said, in my view, this maybe the most important Committee that this House has because it is what falls squarely under Article 96 of our Constitution which is the core mandate of the Senate. I have watched the Committee work and I do appreciate a lot of time it works under very difficult circumstances and with a very difficult mandate also. Many counties have now been before the Committee. It is exactly two months to nominations and another two or four months to elections. What makes me sad is that although the Committee has worked so hard, we have not had a lot of reports tabled in this House. Today some reports were tabled by the Committee and I want to congratulate it and appreciate that. It is only that a report for Murang’a County, for which I have a lot of interest and which has been the subject of a lot of discussion in that Committee, has still not been tabled. Murang’a people are anxious because they also saw the Chairman, a man of great respect, Sen. (Prof.) Anyang’-Nyong’o, table in this House the interim report of the behaviour of the Governor of Murang’a County in front of that Committee. We do not know what has become of that specific report on the behaviour of the Governor when he was declared a hostile witness. The people in the county - I say this openly and without fear of contradiction - are still pursuing and want to know exactly what does it mean when somebody is declared a hostile witness. Further, when the report is made to the Senate, what is expected of that and maybe the Chairman of that Committee would like to elucidate and let the public of this Kenya know exactly what that means and what is to be expected. Mr. Speaker, Sir, for myself, I would say that devolution is, in my view, the most important thing that has happened in this country. This Committee is doing a lot of work to make devolution work and to give the people of Kenya hope. When devolution does not seem to work, the indictment should not be on devolution but on the institutions that were entrusted with devolution. Those mainly are ourselves and the County Assemblies and the Governors. The Senate has continuously done its best. The question is, “What is going to happen to the reports that we have tabled, noting that even when this Committee makes reports to the Senate, we still do not have in the law, for instance, a lifestyle audit against governors who embezzle public funds, a traceability system where assets that have been founded on corrupt practices can be traced and the wealth returned to the people. These are issues maybe that this Committee should explore to see how best it can deal with them. It cannot be just a function of making certain findings and then the people have hope that there would be restitution because this money belongs to the people. At the end of the day, it appears that nothing happened about it. So, I will challenge the Committee, even as I appreciate the very good work it is doing, to broaden its net so that certain recommendations have to do with restitution so that what the public has lost can be restituted to them because we cannot just be voting monies to the counties. We are going to deal with the Division of Revenue Bill very shortly and then the County Allocation of Revenue Bill and a lot of money will be going 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"
}