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{
    "id": 757330,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/757330/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 114,
    "type": "other",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "been in countries in the world where boxes are placed and people come and vote and they go away. That is not exactly the way it is in Kenya. In Kenya, people are cajoled, bribed, forced and pushed and so on to eventually elect somebody. That is not democratic but mock democracy. Those of us who got elected in Turkana believe we were simply elected because God wanted us elected. We faced insurmountable odds during the previous election. I am saying this because maize which was not available was brought in big containers to entice our people to vote. We felt that that was shameful in the sense that when people are hungry, they should be given food by the Government and that food should not be used to cajole them to vote for somebody. That is what happened and we did not have food to give to the people to vote for the National Super Alliance (NASA). That is one thing that was unfair and we should not link it to democracy. Billions and billions of shillings were poured there to encourage people to vote for a particular government. The opposition did not have that money. So, that cannot be called democratic choice. There were choppers flying around taking the people who were opposing us to different places to talk to people and so on and so forth but we in the opposition did not have choppers. We were simply going by road and you know how bad roads in Turkana are. So, we were competing when actually we could not compete. There was every manner of force brought to the opposition to try to elect “the government” that you are talking about now. To add on that, the police took sides. They were telling people that they must vote for the Government. In our view, Jubilee is not the Government but a party. The Government of Kenya is for all of us and the police should be for all of us but that was not the case in Turkana. We had the police pushing us around because they said that we were opposing the Government. We disagreed with that. The chiefs were also told that they must campaign for the Government. In fact, some chiefs in Turkana lost their jobs because they refused that and wanted to have a democratic choice made by the people. They refused to be forced to elect or campaign for somebody they did not want. They simply refused and ended up getting letters telling them that their jobs had been taken away because they did not do what they were told to do. That in itself is not democratic choice. While you, fellow Senators, are talking about democratic choice, great and peaceful elections and so on, I beg to differ. I say that, in my view, where I was, those elections were not fair. They were just forced by the different items that the Government put in place to get the elections going. I also see something about continued peace. I want to say that Turkana County is not a peaceful place. It has never been. We happen to border Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda. These countries have hostile neighbours that are killing Turkana people on a daily basis and especially during this election; there was a lot of hostility between our side, that is, the opposition and the other side. Even today, some of us are still being hunted for like wild animals to be killed because we supported National Super Alliance (NASA). I do not know if you read in the newspapers that my house was shot at. I sleep with my gun every day because I expect that somebody is going to climb into my compound to come and look for my life. Therefore, that kind of thing cannot be called peaceful. Turkana being what it is, it is not really peaceful because the government that"
}