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{
    "id": 977772,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/977772/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 191,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Suba South, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Mbadi",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "matter that needs to be looked into. We expect Hon. Mutahi Kagwe to look into this matter once he assumes office. We want him to interrogate it and help Kenya realise value for money. Hon. Speaker, I want us, as a House, to be ruthlessly honest with ourselves. What is expected of us in the process of vetting? When you are vetting, it means you are supposed to be vetting a process. Therefore, the process of appointing the Cabinet Secretary is pretty straightforward. It is the appointing authority- who is the President of the Republic of Kenya- who decides who should sit in his Cabinet. However, besides that, this House is supposed to deal with other legal and constitutional issues. We are not even supposed to interrogate the competence, academic or otherwise. I do not think it is even our duty to be looking at your certificates to ascertain whether you have a degree of first class or second-class honours or lower second, etcetera . That is not even a requirement in the Constitution. However, we are required to look into issues of regional and ethnic representation and other issues like compliance with Chapter Six of the Constitution. However, are we well equipped to look and determine compliance with Chapter Six of the Constitution? My answer is no. We are not equipped and we rely on State agencies to make this determination for us. These State agencies a lot of times, I realised, do not take their work seriously. That is why there are some Cabinet appointments which this House approved immediately at the beginning of this term of Parliament. You remember that time when we were approving the first Cabinet in the 12th Parliament of the National Super Alliance (NASA) Coalition. Through my instructions, we were not attending Parliament and so we did not participate in the vetting of these Cabinet Secretaries. However, you will agree with me, Hon. Speaker, that Kenyans are asking a lot of questions. We are now seeing some of the people who were vetted and approved without much questions in this House doing things that cannot be done in a civilised nation. These are people we approved not long ago. These are people this House approved without questions being raised by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) and all the other agencies vested with the responsibility of doing background check on individual nominees. I am the Member of Parliament for Suba. What I know best is how to talk with the Suba people. I do not do investigations. I cannot know whether Hon. Mutahi Kagwe for Heaven’s sake could have been a criminal. I am just giving an example, let no one pick it wrongly out there that I have said Hon. Mutahi Kagwe is a criminal. I know he is not. Or at least the information I have is that he is not. But how would I know even if he was a criminal? It is for these agencies to help us. Therefore, if we cannot get credible information on the Cabinet nominees, then there is no need of getting engaged in an exercise that makes us appear like a conveyor belt. Therefore, as a House, we are not well equipped. Hon. Speaker, the questionnaire that we give to Cabinet Secretary nominees to complete and requires each of them to indicate their net worth, stating their sources of income, how do we verify that these people have given factual information? We need to revise the law to require that such information given to Parliament is interrogated and verified by a body like the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission. I know of a Cabinet Secretary nominee whose name I am not going to mention. I suspect very strongly that the information he provided to this House is not correct. I looked at his declaration of his net worth and I know that is not correct. He overstated his net worth for obvious reasons. He knows very well that the moment he gets to that office he is going to enrich himself. So, if you ask him tomorrow how comes you have Kshs1 billion, he will tell you I came in when I had Kshs800 million. So, I have only added Kshs200 million. 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."
}