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"id": 781041,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Hon. Ichung’wah",
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"speaker": {
"id": 1835,
"legal_name": "Anthony Kimani Ichung'Wah",
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"content": "Thank you, Hon. Speaker. I just want to pick up from where Hon. Junet has left. I was not at the steps of Harambee House but I had occasion last week, when we were in Mombasa, through the courtesy of Hon. Junet and his phone, to speak to the Rt. Hon. Raila Odinga. I remember that, that time I mentioned to the Rt. Hon. Raila Odinga that we respect and honour him as a great statesman in this country. Therefore, I take this opportunity to commend both His Excellency President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga for this very momentous opportunity they have afforded the children and the generations of this country. We have been told that leadership and great leaders are defined not by their actions today towards the next elections, but actions that they will do for future generations. What they have bestowed to this country is an opportunity for rebirth of our nation. If you look at the issues Hon. Junet mentioned as being in that document, they are issues to do with strengthening of devolution, divisive elections every election year for the last so many years since 2007... Actually since 2002, we have seen the GDP battering of our economy – our economy going down in a great way. The Leader of the Minority Party mentioned the percentages. From about 1.6 per cent in 2003; 1.4 per cent to a high of 6.9 per cent just before the 2007 post-election violence and that coming down again to almost 5 per cent in 2017. Only last week, the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury confirmed that, as a result of the bad politics and the extended electioneering we had last year… Only the first half of this year, we have lost about Kshs84 billion of our projected revenues. That is the actual cost of bad politics. Therefore, these two leaders are talking to this country asking us to think about our divisive elections every cycle of five years of election years. They are talking about issues to do with our safety and security as a nation; issues to do with shared prosperity. We can only have that shared prosperity if we have a peaceful nation. The fact that these two leaders have come together, and they said it in their statement, in a big way, symbolises the full cycle of divisions that this country has gone through over the years. They said it will not be in their time as leaders, as President and the Leader of the Opposition, that they will allow this country to go to the dogs. They sought our support last Friday, that is, those of us behind them, in the Jubilee Party and NASA. I commend those of us in the JP fraternity for rallying behind President Uhuru Kenyatta in supporting this initiative. I want to pose that challenge to our colleagues in the NASA. Irrespective of whether you are in the ODM, Wiper Democratic Party- Kenya (WDP-K), FORD- Kenya, Amani National Congress (ANC) and the other parties in that coalition, please, rally behind your leader who is Raila Odinga to bring this nation together so that we may have that shared prosperity. As the Whip of the Minority Party says, after these five years, we are going to witness a merger. It is not Tinga being swallowed by Jogoo ; the ODM is not being swallowed by the JP. It is not a nusu mkate coalition. It is not even a coalition agreement. It is an agreement to work together. It even has nothing to do with succession politics. It is about bringing our nation together to make sure that our economy thrives so that in the year 2022, we will compete on the basis of ideals and policies that each of the political arm will sell to the people of Kenya. It will not be on the basis of our ethnicity or personalities. Therefore, as a House and as Kenyans, we must support these two leaders to bring this country together, end our divisive politics, build our economy and Kenyans in 2022 will judge even those of us seated here as Members of Parliament, not on the basis of how much we insulted Uhuru Kenyatta or Raila Odinga. I want to sympathise with my friend Sankok. You will be judged on the basis of how well you improved the lives of Kenyans at large. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}