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{
    "id": 941596,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/941596/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 512,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Were",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13183,
        "legal_name": "Petronila Were Lokorio",
        "slug": "petronila-were-lokorio"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker Sir, for the opportunity to contribute to this Motion. From the onset, I want to say that I oppose the Regulations that seek to amend the Public Finance Management (PFM) Act. First, I would like to say that I am a very happy person today for this reason; that my party, Amani National Congress (ANC) has been vindicated. For a long time, my party leader hon. Musalia Mudavadi has been talking about increasing debt and its effect to this country. The chicken have now come home to roost, and that is where my happiness lies. That aside, it is sad where we are taking this country, if we open up the debt ceiling by more that 50 per cent. The Committee on Finance and Budget has told us that they asked for a debt restructuring report from the National Treasury to indicate what they have done to restructure the debt that is there is now. However, they were not given that information. Who are we then to allow them to increase debt which they cannot manage? Mr. Deputy Speaker Sir, I would like to speak like an ordinary Kenyan; maybe Kenyans will understand. In this country, we have people called shylocks. Shylocks offer loans with the highest interest rates, especially to desperate people and take advantage of them. If you have taken a loan or two from a shylock, you do not borrow loans from more shylocks because that will sink you. That is where we are right now as a country. This kind of borrowing is going to distress our people. A friend of mine called Edward Omung’ala has written about how we need to brace ourselves for the days to come. In essence, this bracing of ourselves is saying that we are in a deep hole. We cannot continue to dig that hole while we are in there because if we do so, we will bury ourselves. Therefore, I oppose vehemently the idea brought about by this Motion that we revise our debt ceiling to increase it by 50 per cent. This country is suffering from something called corruption. We have institutionalised corruption to an extent that opening up this ceiling is going to make it possible for more corruption to occur. We have not been given projects that cover the whole country that are going to be financed by this extra money that we are going to borrow. How are we supposed to approve something whose benefit we cannot out rightly see? As representatives of the people at the county level, if we are not seeing benefit to our counties, why should we give them money? Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we should note that devolution of counties is for the people and not for governors. Governors may accept something, but that is for their own personal selfish interests and not necessarily for the interest of counties. We, as Senate, represent counties and not just governors. Governors are holding the counties in trust for the people, just like we do. Therefore, we should not accept to increase debt just because governors have said they want to do so. We also know that increasing debt will affect funding of the counties. Already we suffer from something that has been going on since devolution started. We devolved functions, but did not devolve funds in some of the most crucial areas like the health"
}