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{
    "id": 7324,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/7324/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 485,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dr. Eseli",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 141,
        "legal_name": "David Eseli Simiyu",
        "slug": "david-eseli"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for this chance to second the Motion on the Report of the Committee on the Cost of Living. It was quite an eye opener when we were on this Committee’s business in the sense that we got out there and wananchi asked us: “You are our leaders and you should know. Why have you come back to ask us”? Being an eye opener, we learnt several things. I, for one, learnt that a cartel-controlled economy is not sustainable. Indeed, as the Mover has alluded to, we have several cartels in our economy that virtually control everything. The regulators appear to be helpless especially in the oil sector where they deny having any cartels. Even as I speak, there has been purchase of bulk fuel for February next year at a price higher than the market rate right now using the previous week’s Dollar exchange rates. This is being done by the same oil cartels. So, our economy has too many cartels and these are the people who are making the cost of living so high. In the sugar sector, you will find that the distributors of sugar are the same ones from factory to factory. They are the same people using different company names, but they are the same people. These kind of people can keep the sugar away from the market and push up the prices and then offload the sugar that they have. These cartels are virtually bringing the country to its knees and we are not looking at it that way. If you take the cereals production, we despise the farmer so much that he has been left at the mercy of middlemen who are working as cartels. During the harvesting of maize, they move from South Rift to Western to North Rift depending on when the harvests are being done and mop up the maize at throw away prices and fuel rural poverty. When they fuel rural poverty, the people move to the cities and increase urban poverty and this becomes a vicious cycle. The problem we have had in the country is that we have looked too much to be dictated to by the Bretton Woods organizations and the various international donor organizations to the extent that we have failed to address the key issues that we should address as a nation. It is now quite clear that outright capitalism as we know it has failed. When you look at Europe, the economy is imploding. When you look at America, it is tittering on tenterhooks. So, it shows that outright capitalism as we know it or as the Chicago School economists wants to put it, has failed. The Chicago School economists mean leaving everything to the free market forces. The free market forces can never deliver healthcare to all. They cannot because healthcare is an expensive service and the free market cannot possibly deliver such a service. But the Chicago School economists have pushed it for everybody to accept liberalization at whatever cost. This caused a lot of pain in the former republics of the USSR. They have caused a lot of pain in South America, the same people experimenting with the Chicago school kind of economics leaving out the Keynesian type of economics that leaves a social safety net for the citizens, be it by providing foodstuffs, healthcare or education. I would plead with our people who are running all over the country wanting to be president next time; Hon. Kibaki came on and promised free education which is a social"
}