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"content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, you find governors coming to this city, with baskets hoping that when they leave town, that basket will be filled with some fruits to take back to the county. That is not the way it is supposed to work. I hope that when we are talking about these matters of resources, we should still insist that we are not giving enough to the counties. I may have problems with governors and county assemblies, but as long as sufficient resources are not going to the counties, I do not think we are doing justice to those who sat down and thought that devolution is a good thing for this country. The second pillar that I want to talk about in the Constitution, which again is an improvement from what was there in the previous Constitution, is Chapter 12 which deals with public finance; the way we should treat public finance. It does not leave it to us, it requires of us to make sure that we are prudent in the expenditure of public resources. That goes to both the national and county governments. Right now, truth be told, the Government is broke. We can try to use other words but this system has failed, is failing and is failed! When you have to borrow in order to pay salaries and not to develop, the system is not working and we should be honest about it. That is why prudence is important in the way we spend our resources. To say the Government of Kenya is broke when people in Government can spend Khs10 million at a Harambe and you are telling them you want to tax them more, what are we talking about? In fact, Mr. Speaker, Sir, the sums of money that are being given out as Harambee in this country, are awkwardly obscene. You can ask Bill Gates to go to a Harambee, he will not be able to give you the kind of money we, public officers, are giving in this country. This money is getting into the hands of people who are known and they are being protected. If you take a drive to the villages, for instance, to Busia, a lot of buildings that are coming up do not belong to the people in the private sector. We know which part of the Government they are coming from, where someone suddenly, without any education, but because he or she is at the right place in a public office, comes up with a monument in the village thinking that resources have come from his own personal savings. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we should not look like Mobutus everywhere; you know Mobutu used to walk with money everywhere. We should not look like this leader from West Africa who was caught in Brazil with USD16 million at the airport. It is hard to tell Kenyans that we are broke when, indeed, it is a question of waste of public resources. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, Sir, I am appealing to the national Government to be more innovative in raising resources. The Kibaki Government was very innovative, the way they dealt with the lack of resources to fund national projects. Former President Kibaki came into Government when the national budget was something below Kshs600 million. In fact, it was about Kshs400 million. Within one year, the revenue base for the Government of the Republic of Kenya was Kshs800 million without borrowing. There should be innovative ways of raising resources and when you build something like the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), the counter part of it, you must make sure that when that project is done, it is sustainable. Otherwise, we will be building a lot of monuments. If you go to Moscow, for example, you can see a lot of monuments from Stalin; they are all there built in competition with the West. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}