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{
    "id": 814161,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/814161/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 122,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Suba South, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Ng’ongo",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "Two final remarks on this; I am sure my concerns and those of the Leader of the Majority Party have been aggravated by what has transacted on this issue of sugar. We have to be ruthlessly candid with each other. I remember in the 11th Parliament, some Members of Parliament disrupted a meeting of the Departmental Committee on Finance and Planning. I remember one of the Hon. Members abused one of the Members of Parliament. He is my friend and he is still in this August House, and I do not want to mention him. I will, however, mention the MP who was abused. Hon. Oburu Odinga was abused because he was asking Anne Waiguru questions on National Youth Service (NYS). It did not even last a month before NYS became a shame in this country. Those Members never spoke again about it. I have no issues with these Cabinet Secretaries, whether it is Matiang’i or who. I have no problem with them. But what business do you really have as a Member of Parliament to go to a committee to speak for a Cabinet Secretary and you do not work in that ministry! The bottom line is that the Cabinet Secretaries have staff. They are competent enough. We vetted them before they were given those jobs. Please let them defend themselves. When we see you defending these Cabinet Secretaries and then we hear rumours that some money has exchanged hands, we cannot dismiss them. I have heard a lot of rumours that MPs are being bribed. Most of the times, I say it is not true. But when I see the behaviour of some of our colleagues, I am tempted to agree with those people. How do you go to a committee and become so emotional about a matter and emotional about defending a Cabinet Secretary as if you work in that ministry? This is a matter that should not be treated casually. As a matter of fact, you will allow some of us to do our investigations. We have been holding very high threshold for Cabinet Secretaries. If you are mentioned, go home first as we investigate you. If a Member of either Jubilee or National Super Alliance (NASA) is adversely mentioned in a matter, we remove them from committees as investigation continues. That should not be seen as witch-hunt. It is just about bringing sanity and pride back to this House. That is why some of those people have the courtesy and the guts to call us “pigs” when some of us are very clean. We can never be near being described as pigs. We are clean not just in terms of our dressing or showering every day, but we are clean in terms of character and integrity. This is a matter that is timely and we need to pronounce ourselves. We are not mentioning any names. We are not targeting any individual. If you know you are a victim, there is a saying that I use when I am campaigning. I cannot easily translate it in English but I will try. When Hon. Millie rises, she will translate better. I usually tell people that when a pastor or a priest is delivering a sermon and you feel that the sermon has touched you in a way that has pricked your conscience, instead of complaining that someone must have leaked your secret to the pastor, please change your character. We are just delivering a sermon here. The Leader of the Majority Party and I, have become preachers. We are delivering a message that if you are a bad apple amongst us, please change. You can do your things without looking at those small handouts which make you cheap, like hugging a witness for no reason. Someone who is suspected of possibly killing our people even if it is not true and before we rule it out, how do I hug such a person and I do not know whether he has brought bad sugar in this country? I have been consuming sugar, since then to date, and I have 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."
}