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{
    "id": 789400,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/789400/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 37,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wamatangi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 646,
        "legal_name": "Paul Kimani Wamatangi",
        "slug": "paul-kimani-wamatangi"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, I wish to join you and my colleagues in condoling with the family of the late Kenneth Njindo Matiba. In my condolences, I want to note specifically that if the late Kenneth Matiba was like many of us today, maybe this afternoon he would have been playing golf in either Muthaiga or signing visitor’s books. People would be waiting for him there to receive him and escort him to places. He would have been living a life of luxury. However, because he chose to stand for liberty; for what he believed in, that is why today he is lying in a morgue. Today I consider myself a big beneficiary of the work and sacrifices made by people and especially the late Kenneth Matiba. A politician like myself who has had to fight all the way up from obscurity to find space in this House to say the words I am saying, would never have found that space. For the work that that man did for this country, we must laud and remember him. Mr. Speaker, Sir without repeating what some of my colleagues have said here, it is very sad that a man who was the proprietor of a chain of hotels, a man who was a proprietor of top notch schools in this country, spent his last days on a wheelchair waiting for well-wishers to come see him and help him pay his bills. We know that it is just recently that a court of law awarded Mr. Matiba damages for the suffering he has endured over all these years. I want to remind Members that even if he has died and is going to be buried, he died without enjoying a penny of the award he was given to pay even for his own medical bills. The question we should be asking ourselves is, even as we are here, that award is still pending. Is it going to be a continuation of the suffering he has endured for the remainder of his family? Will his wife and children queue and follow up in every courtroom and office to secure what had been awarded to him? Can this country rise to its consciousness and say we will not let people suffer like that? I like what Senator Orengo has said, since, the way I knew Matiba and I remember the results of the election of that year; 1992. When he came from abroad, he came to the airport with his slogans and his party FORD- Asili and went campaigning. The area he got most of the votes was in western Kenya, a signature and indication that he was a man of all the people. I sincerely join my colleagues, his family and Kenyans in condoling with them. I pray that the good Lord will rest his soul in eternal peace and I vow deeply that the value and work he put, the sacrifices he made will not go down in vain. We shall remember that we should not let ourselves and our country slide back to where we were at that time, to have won that freedom that we have today."
}