Where is the Leader of Government Business? The Deputy Leader of Government Business is not in either!

Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me take this rare privilege to move this Procedural Motion, on behalf of the Leader of Government Business. I beg to move:- THAT, this House orders that the Business appearing in today's Order Paper be exempted from the provisions of Standing Order No.33, being a Wednesday Morning, a day allocated for Private Members' Motions.

seconded.

Mr. Affey, you may have the Floor!

Thank you very much, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this Motion. As you know, this Motion was interrupted in order to provide the House with an opportunity to debate the Bills that we debated and passed 228 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 yesterday. I want to take this opportunity to, first of all, thank the House for what they did yesterday. They performed a patriotic duty. It was the desire of Kenyans that this House behaved the way it did for peace and tranquillity to prevail in this country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, having said that, I stand here this morning to thank my party, the Orange Democratic Party of Kenya ODM(K), for giving me the opportunity to be part of this historic Tenth Parliament. As you know, some of us are privileged because we have served in this House before. The President, in his contribution yesterday, emphasized reconciliation, nation-building, security and peace. We all know that without peace we cannot have security and stability in the country. It is very disturbing to know that a country like Kenya, which assisted other states in the region to find peace and security, reconciliation, and even putting back in place governments which had collapsed, can require similar services from Africa and the rest of the world. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, some of us, and particularly myself, had an opportunity to work for this country as an Ambassador in Somalia. As you know, Somalia could be having one of the most stable governments in this region because her people are one. They speak one language. They profess the same religion. Even their dressing is almost uniform. Everything in that country is uniform. However, because of political recklessness, compounded by greed, ethnicity and desire by politicians to feel good, the government structures of that country collapsed along time ago. Seventeen years down the road, the people of Somalia cannot have peace. There is no government that is able to work on behalf of the people. Just imagine what could have happened if politicians here did not do what they did yesterday. They rose to the occasion to save this country. Just imagine what could have happened to a country of 43 ethnic communities if we did not rise to occasion! If it tips off, Kenya will never be the same again. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you ask these hon. Members to speak their different languages, you will think you are in a crazy marketplace. That is why Kiswahili is an important language in this country, because it is a unifying factor. Let us be careful not to destroy what we have. It is only after you have destroyed that you can understand the meaning of what you have. I remember in one of our discussions in Somalia, Mogadishu, a young man approached me and told me: "Mr. Ambassador, I just want to know how I can become a Kenyan". Then I was taken aback. I asked him why he wanted to be a Kenyan, yet he had a country. Then he told me that in Kenya children go to school - he was 14 years old, yet he had never seen the inside of a classroom. He said Kenya is a peaceful country and its leaders are patriotic. So, yesterday when I saw Mr. Raila and the President behaving the way they behaved, leading the country towards peace and stability, I just remembered how important it is to be patriotic. It is only through patriotism that you can get peace. As I discuss patriotism, allow me to pay tribute to my party leader, Mr. Musyoka, the Vice- President. We know that there were elections and the aftermath of the elections. There was a contest and the aftermath became a tribal contest or war. It was never about who had won or lost the elections. If the Vice-President and the party did not close ranks early enough with the President of the country, we would not be speaking about Kenya today. Even reconciliation would have been impossible. Therefore, we must understand that, as we pay tribute to these leaders, there are others who sacrificed. There was a lot of hostility in some sections of the country and in the media at that time, but we knew we were doing what was right for Kenya. As you know, Western Province and Nyanza provinces were burning, and the Rift Valley was at war. There were also hostilities and tension in Nairobi, in places like Mathare and Embakasi. If we added to those areas Eastern Province, including Ukambani, where could we be today? It would have been a disaster. As we pay tribute to people, we need to acknowledge that my party actually saved Kenya. It is us who took the March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 229 initiative to close ranks early enough with the President in order to make Kenya a better country, and provide the conducive environment for peace to prevail, and for dialogue to take place. It was not about what was written in the media, but about patriotism. That was about saving Kenya and making it a better place. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the President, in his Address to Parliament discussed a few important matters. I am sad to note that where I come from, North Eastern Province, the bread basket is livestock. In this Address, not a single statement was made about the livestock industry. What it means is that we are asking for justice in this country. The truth should be told. Apparently, certain economic activities are better than others. We must adjust the way the Budget is done in this country. We must reflect the realities in this country. This country is not only about coffee and tea, but also about camels, goats and sheep. There are people whose livelihoods depend on these animals. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, as we do the Constitution and ask for justice, I just want to say that the proposed Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission is so critical for us. Right now, there are internally displaced persons, whom we all would like to resume normal lives. That should be done as quickly as possible. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, at some stage I thought we had surrendered our sovereignty. There are 17 Kenyans who are languishing in jails in Ethiopia. They have no desire to be there. If they are criminals, we have our courts to try them. Why is it that we took them all the way to Ethiopia and subjected their families to untold suffering, pain and anxiety? As we discuss this, I want to request the Government - I am happy that the Leader of Government Business is here - that, in order to create the conditions for reconciliation and healing, those Kenyans must be brought back as soon as possible, even if it means doing so tomorrow and this country will be more at peace with itself. I do not understand why we took them to Ethiopia, yet we have courts here and those people are Kenyans. Other people, who found themselves in that kind of a situation, have been taken back by their respective countries. Let us discuss this in good faith and trust. Let us not also use political rallies to undermine what we achieved yesterday, because all of us cannot be President, Prime Minister, Vice-President or Ministers. With those few remarks, I beg to support.

Order, Prof. Sambili! You have to move all the way to the end of the Floor, bow then come to this side!

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. As you may notice, it is not us, hon. Members, but even on the part of the Chair there were a few moments of lapse yesterday with regard to Standing Orders. Because this has become important, would I be in order to request the Chair to arrange a trip, now that there is peace in Malindi, to one of the five- star hotels, so that hon. Members can go there and acclimatise themselves with the Standing Orders of the House?

Order! Dr. Khalwale, you are jumping the gun! There is going to be a communication from the Chair today in the afternoon on the same. Thank you. 230 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008

Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, thank you for this opportunity to address this House. I want to begin by congratulating you on your election as the Deputy Speaker. I would like to take this opportunity to also express my gratitude to the people of Mogotio, who made history by electing a woman Member of Parliament. I want to assure them that I will do my best to meet their needs, trusting God to help me. Secondly, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate our leaders, His Excellency the President, Mr. Kibaki, and Mr. Raila, the Prime Minister-designate, for signing the Peace Accord, and saving this country from problems. In the same vein, I also want to thank the National Mediation Committee, comprising of our colleagues here, and the international mediation committee, led by Dr. Kofi Annan. Thirdly, I want to congratulate all of us because the challenges we faced to get seats in Parliament were very many. They have not been lost to us. I want to congratulate all of us for making it to this House. It is a historic House given what has been happening in this country, and even what we did yesterday. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Presidential Speech, which I support, was comprehensive in focus. I would like to just touch on, maybe, three aspects. I will begin with education and, specifically, higher education. Before I was given this opportunity by the people of Mogotio to come to this august House, I had been working in a university for about 16 years. I would like to say that in seeking to promote equitable opportunities for Kenyans, particularly for those from semi-arid areas - and Mogotio is one of the semi-arid districts in this country - I want to propose or ask that the admission policy to universities be reviewed, so that students who meet the minimum entry requirements to universities, that is C+ and above, are admitted on the basis of constituencies rather than districts. That will give them an opportunity to build capacity. We will have more people from such constituencies. It is important to give the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) more money, so that students who get into parallel programmes in public universities are given loans like their counterparts in public universities. At the moment, students who get admitted to private universities are given loans. But those who are admitted to parallel programmes in public universities do not get loans. I think that is not fair. I want to request that HELB should be given more money and those students who get admitted to parallel programmes in public universities should be given loans. That is because those programmes are very expensive. I say that because, as we know, out of about 276,000 students who sat for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) last year, only 16,000 will be admitted to the universities. What will happen to the 260,000 plus students? They will try to get into parallel programmes and they cannot afford. If we are willing to support - and we should support people from marginalised areas in this country - they need to be given loans. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to say that the re-tabling of the Employment Policy Paper that was mentioned in the President's Speech is eagerly awaited. I think it is very important that we seek means of creating employment in the rural areas in this country, so that our youth, who comprise 70 per cent of our population, get an opportunity to contribute to national development. In the same vein, I want to say that the livestock sector, which has been mentioned by my colleagues, should be supported. In Mogotio, which is a semi-arid area like I have said, people rear goats, sheep and cattle. I would like to request the Kenya Meat Commission to open a branch in Mogotio, or Baringo Central, so that the people could get employment and sell their livestock. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in facilitating the realisation of the enormous potential of the tourism industry, as is mentioned in the Speech, I want to say that Mogotio is the home of the unique hot springs of Lake Bogoria. I do not know how many of us have been there. That is an March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 231 attraction to the tourists and even us in this country. Yet, those hot springs are hardly accessible! There is no road. I want to request that the development of those roads that lead to the hot springs be given priority alongside other infrastructure like electricity and water. Finally, I want to congratulate all of us, specifically, for what we did yesterday. As we implement the Peace Accord, I would like to mention that it is important for us and everyone to be sensitive in the way we express our views. I know that many people were affected by the problems that followed the December 2007 General Elections. I know some places where nursery school children are so scared of the police because they heard gunshots. Those are babies who have been traumatized. There is a lot work that needs to be done. I know that we will be responsible in discussing these issues, so that we put our country where it should be. With those few remarks, I beg to support the Presidential Speech.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to make my first speech in this Tenth Parliament. I wish to begin by thanking my party, KANU, for giving me this wonderful opportunity of becoming a professional Nominated Member of Parliament by nominating me for a second time. Secondly, I would like to thank the Principals for signing the Peace Agreement which has brought us this relative peace that we are enjoying. We, as Kenyans, have been net exporters of peace negotiators and relief workers throughout the region. So, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the African Continent, for once, for allowing us to import peace negotiators and relief workers to help us in this trying time. In that light, I would like to thank His Excellency Dr. Kofi Annan for spearheading and managing the peace negotiations. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we, as Members of Parliament, must be in the forefront speaking about peace at all levels. But to begin with this Parliament, I would like to urge Mr. Speaker and Mr. Deputy Speaker that some of the things that we propose like trips should not be allowed. For example, some Members of Parliament went to Rwanda last year to witness what happened during the genocide. It is clear that many of the constituents of the hon. Members who visited Rwanda actually suffered more chaos than those of hon. Members who did not go there. I would like to propose that, in this Parliament, instead of hon. Members visiting Rwanda, we should instead visit Tanzania, where hon. Members will not be asking me the difficult question: "What is your tribe?" and instead ask will me: "What region do you come from?" I, therefore, urge that we should not be going to study the negative. Instead, we should focus on studying the positive. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the shoe is now in a different foot. A lot of the laws that we refused to pass last year were not passed because we were thinking very myopically. We imagined we would be in the positions we were in at one particular time throughout. I would like to urge hon. Members that we stop looking at things depending on which side of the political divide we are in and instead look at how good legislation is to Kenyans. In the last Parliament, I was a Member of the Departmental Committee on Administration of Justice and Legal Affairs. Some of the proposals that we put forth to this House but were rejected, and even never saw the light of the day in the House Business Committee (HBC), would have saved us. The Constitutional amendments we are calling for were going to allow for a re-run of the presidential election, something that is not in our Constitution. The amendments were going to allow for an Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) that was more transparent and the vetting of public appointments, so that we stop having nepotism being the main criterion for making public appointments. Many hon. Members on both sides of this House declined to support the bringing of that legislation, because they thought we would never be in a position where they would need a 232 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 presidential election re-run. This Tenth Parliament, that we have called "historic", will only be historic if we make legislation that is in the interest of Kenyans, so that we get a situation in which whichever shoe you wear at a particular time, you will not be negatively affected. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other business that I would really urge hon. Members to work on is the fact that we always think of individuals when we are making legislation. Yesterday, there was a bad precedent, because we were really making bad law because we needed it politically. I hope that, that is not going to be what we are going to do for the rest of this Session of Parliament. People talk about reviewing and changing the ECK, but when we come to appointing the ECK commissioners, we are going to have people saying they want to have commissioners nominated by the ODM or PNU parties. These will be people who will not have been vetted by anybody. I would like us to be very critical of the legislation we bring to this House. It is not just enough that a commissioner must come from a party. We should be looking at meritocracy. The only way of doing that is to ensure that we put in place all the legislations that will contain a vetting mechanism that will ensure that if you are partyless, but you are qualified to exercise a function, you are given that responsibility rather than basing appointments on the strength of a nominee's political party in this House. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, on the issue of building institutions, one of the good pieces of legislation that was brought to the Ninth Parliament by our colleague, Mr. Oloo-Aringo, was the Fiscal Analysis and Appropriation Bill, which was going to strengthen Parliament in reviewing the Budget. The exercise of reviewing the Budget in this House is a ritual. It is like those prayers people say when they are singing. Nobody can make any change in the Budget that comes to this House, yet we saw the House Business Committee and the Minister for Finance refusing to have that legislation implemented. That is not the only legislation that strengthens institutions that did not get assented to. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, on the issue of the Political Parties Bill, who knows about the coalition agreement that was signed between the PNU and ODM(K)? Who is the custodian of that document? If the Political Parties Bill had been assented to, the Registrar of Political Parties would be the custodian of that document. If there is any dispute that is to arise, he or she would be the person to deal with it and send it to the Political Parties Disputes Tribunal (PPDT). It in that light that I would like to urge His Excellency the President that, because of the difficulties of ethnicity that we have, we need to strengthen political parties. He should immediately assent to the Political Parties Bill. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, His Excellency the President, in his Address, mentioned that we are going to have amendments to the Local Government Act in this House to enable the direct election of mayors and county council chairmen. The female hon. Members, who got nominated, have the IPPG hon. Members to thank for the review of Section 33 of this Constitution, which forced the political parties to ensure that 50 per cent of those nominated had to be women. This is not the case with the Local Authorities Act, which allows councils such as Mombasa, Garissa and others to have councils that do not have a single female nominated councillor. I will support that legislation the day it comes to this House. But I urge that we make an amendment to have it become gender-sensitive, so that we do not have scenarios where two men want to be mayor and deputy mayor. This process has to be gender-balanced. The nomination of councillors has also got to be balanced. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, His Excellency the President also spoke about the eradication of slums. As Kenyans, the best example of slum eradication, with a poverty alleviation component, was the project by the late Tom Mboya. He made sure that the houses that were built for eradicating slums were going to generate sufficient income in terms of sub-leasing, so that slum March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 233 dwellers did not have to pay so much money that they were forced to come up with new slums. As we talk about the issue of slum eradication, let us not have projects like the Kibera Highrise, where it is the rich who benefited and not the people from Kibera. Let us not just pay lip service to this. When the housing policies come to this House and we talk about slum eradication, we must be very clear that the people in the slums cannot pay the Kshs13,000 that the National Housing Corporation (NHC) is asking them to pay per month. They cannot get that amount even if they leased out the entire house. What we are saying is that we will wait for a rich person to come, pay that person a little amount, who will then move out and start building some other slums. We must look at the issue of how we implement the policies that come to this House. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in the last Parliament I brought a Motion on delegated legislation, which the previous Speaker promised would be in the new Standing Orders. I will be keenly asking for your support to ensure that the laws and policies we pass in this House are implemented to the letter and spirit. It should not be for Ministers to take legislation and interpret it as they wish. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, finally, I would like to mention the fact that we, as a nation, in the past, have been very good at signing international agreements that we have had no intention of domesticating. As we look at the many amendments we want to make to our Constitution, and the new laws that we will be bringing to this House, I would like to urge that we also include the mandatory domestication of any legislation that our Executive signs in the international arena. For example, I would want the UN Security Council Resolution No.1325, that deals with women and children in conflict, domesticated in this House, so that we do not see the things that we saw. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, with those many remarks, I beg to support.

Asante, Bw. Naibu Spika. Nakushukuru kwa kunipa nafasi hii. Majina yangu kamili ni Mung'aro Gideon Maitha, Mbunge wa Eneo Bunge la Malindi. Kwanza, ningetaka kuchukua nafasi hii kuwashukuru watu wa Malindi kwa kunichagua kuwa katika Bunge hili la Kumi, ambalo ni la kihistoria. Wamenipa uwezo wa kuwa mmoja wa Wabunge katika Bunge hili. Pili, ningetaka kumpongeza Dkt. Khalwale kwa sababu anaomba Bunge hili lipeleke Wabunge kule Malindi. Mji wa Malindi ulikuwa wa amani wakati wa vurugu zote zilizotokea baada ya uchaguzi mkuu. Pia, nawapongeza watu wa Pwani kwa jumla kwa sababu tulipoenda huko kama Wabunge, tuliwaambia watu wa Pwani ni lazima waishi kwa amani, kwa sababu Bunge hili la Kumi lilipofunguliwa, hatukuona Wabunge wa PNU na ODM wakipigana makonde; walikuwa wakicheka na kubadilishana mawazo. Bw. Naibu Spika, nikichangia Hotuba ya Rais, kwanza kabisa ningependa kuwapongeza wote waliohusika katika kuhakikisha kwamba kuna amani na maridhiano katika nchi yetu ya Kenya. Lakini pia ningependa hasa kutilia mkazo Mswada wa Utalii ambao utaletwa katika Bunge. Mswada huu unagusia mambo mengi katika Mkoa wetu wa Pwani. Tungependa Mswada huo ukiletwa hapa Bungeni, tuulize maswali na tuufanyie marekebisho yanoyowezekana ili watu wa Mkoa wa Pwani waanze kupata manufaa ya shughuli za utalii. Miaka nenda, miaka rudi, kila kunapotajwa masuala ya utalii katika Bunge, utamsikia Waziri wa Fedha akituambia kwamba utalii umeleta mchango mkubwa katika nchi hii. Inasikitisha kwamba mpaka leo, watu wa Mkoa wa Pwani bado ni maskini na hali wao wanaleta mabilioni ya pesa katika nchi hii. Tungependa Mswada huu ukiletwa hapa Bungeni ufanyiwe marekebisho ili tupate jinsi ambavyo watu wa Mkoa wa Pwani watapata fedha katika kila kitanda kinacholaliwa na mtalii kwa siku na vile vile tuweze kupata ushuru kutoka Mbuga ya Wanyama ya Tsavo kama ambavyo watu wa Maasai Mara na Baraza la Narok linavyopata ushuru kutoka kwa watalii wanaoenda kwa Mbuga ya Wanyama pori ya Maasai Mara. Sisi tunayo Mbuga ya Wanyama ya Tsavo na sioni tofauti kati ya watu wa Maasai Mara na 234 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 watu wa Mkoa wa Pwani. Ikiwa tunaongea kuhusu usawa katika ugawaji wa raslimali, basi ni muhimu kila sehemu iangaliwe kuambatana na mapato yake. Hatujasema eti pesa zote za utalii zibaki katika Mkoa wa Pwani, bali tunasema kwamba kuna haja ya kiasi fulani cha fedha kubaki pale katika Mkoa wa Pwani ili tuweze kuendesha shughuli hizo za utalii. Fedha hizo zitatumiwa katika kukarabati barabara na vifaa vingine ambavyo vitawavutia wageni zaidi. Bw. Naibu Spika, kuhusu suala la ardhi, natumai nitashirikiana na Wabunge wenzangu kwa sababu katika Mkoa wa Pwani, hili limekuwa suala sugu. Sababu hasa ya hili suala la ardhi kuleta taabu katika Mkoa wa Pwani ni bahari. Imekuwa desturi ya viongozi Serikalini, kila kunapoibuka suala la ardhi katika Mkoa wa Pwani, kwa sababu ya ufuo wa bahari--- Inaonekana mwenyeji katika Mkoa wa Pwani hastahili kupata shamba katika ufuo wa bahari ila anastahili tu kupata shamba kando ya bahari. Hii ndiyo imeleta tatizo la maskwota hasa kule kwetu Malindi. Kila siku utasikia - hasa katika sehemu moja iitwayo Chembe Kibabamchu na Kilifi Jimbo - Waziri anayechaguliwa mara ya kwanza huja Malindi kujaribu kutatua suala hili. Baada ya muda, utasikia wamesimamisha ugawaji ardhi katika sehemu hii. Kinachoshangaza ni kwamba kila wanaposimamisha utoaji wa stakabadhi za kumiliki ardhi katika sehemu hii, utapata watu wakitoka Nairobi wakiwa na stakabadhi tayari kuuza ardhi hizo hizo. Wao huzibadilisha kwa watu wengine huku wenyeji wakiangalia tu. Hili jambo likiendelea, hatutaweza kutatua suala la ardhi katika Mkoa wa Pwani. Kwa hivyo, upo umuhimu kwamba watu wakae pamoja. Kila mtu anaruhusiwa kuwa na ardhi katika nchi ya Kenya. Mswada wetu wa maridhiano unatuhimiza sisi Wakenya kuishi pamoja kama Wakenya. Lakini hatutaweza kuishi pamoja ikiwa utakuja kuishi nami kama jirani na wakati ninakukaribisha wewe unapata kibali cha kumiliki ardhi ilhali mimi mwenyeji nabakia skwota. Kwa hivyo, suala hili ni lazima liangaliwe kwa undani sana. Bw. Naibu Spika, Bandari ya Kilindini huiletea nchi yetu ya Kenya mapato makubwa sana. Bidhaa zote kutoka nje zinazoenda nchi jirani hupitia Kilindini. Kwa miaka mingi sana, watu wa Pwani hata kama si Pwani kwa jumla lakini Baraza la Jiji la Mombasa, wameuliza wapate angaa dola moja kwa kila tani ya mizigo inayoingia Kilindini. Hili suala ni lazima liangaliwe. Hakuna haki ikiwa mtu ataleta mizigo kutoka kokote katika nchi ya Kenya, kisha alipe ushuru ama cess kwa baraza lake la manispaa lakini akifika Mombasa, mizigo hiyo itapitia mabaraza ya Voi na Mariakani mpaka ifike Kilindini, ilhali hakuna faida kwa mkaazi wa pwani. Sharti kuwe na faida kwa wakaazi wa Mkoa wa Pwani. Kwa hivyo, kuna haja ya kuona kwamba kiasi fulani cha pesa ama ile dola moja ambayo inatozwa katika Bandari ya Mombasa iweze kupatikana ili iweze kusaidia Mkoa wa Pwani. Natumai wenzangu ambao mara hii tumechaguliwa kuja Bungeni kutoka Mkoa wa Pwani, tumekubaliana kwa kauli moja kwamba ajenda yetu kubwa ambayo tutatekeleza kama watu wa Mkoa wa Pwani, na kama Wakenya, ni kuhakikisha kwamba watu wetu hawatabaki maskini ilhali utajiri umejaa katika mkoa huo. Bw. Naibu Spika, suala la uchaguzi wa moja kwa moja wa mameya katika mabaraza ni muhimu sana. Naongea hivyo kwa sababu nimekuwa Meya wa Malindi kwa muda wa miaka mitano. Vile vile nilikuwa Naibu Mwenyekiti wa mabaraza yote nchini. Nilihusika sana katika kuibua Mswada wa kuwachagua mameya moja kwa moja. Kile tunachoomba ni kwamba Mswada huu ukiletewa Bungeni, basi isiwe tu unahusu wananchi kuwachagua mameya moja kwa moja, lakini pia upendekeze kwamba makatibu wa mabaraza waweze kuajiriwa moja kwa moja kutoka kwa mabaraza ili ufisadi unaoendelezwa na makatibu, hasa baada ya mabaraza kuvunjwa, uondolewe. Utashangaa kutambua yaliyofanyika tangu mabaraza yavunjwe kuanzia Oktoba mpaka kura zilipopigwa. Sheria za baraza zinasema kwamba hakuna pendekezo ama kitu kitakachopitishwa kama hakuna baraza. Utashangaa kwamba maendeleo mengi hufanywa na makatibu wa mabaraza mbio mbio wakati ambapo mabaraza hayo yamevunjwa, kwa sababu March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 235 wakati huo kuna nafasi ya kufuja mali, pesa na kutwaa mashamba ya mabaraza. Kwa hivyo, ni muhimu kwamba Mswada huu ukija, mameya walioko waweze kukaa ofisini hadi meya mwingine achaguliwe ili aweze kuchukua ofisi na ajue anachukua nini. Mhe. Sambili aliongea kuhusu uhamiaji kutoka mashambani hadi mijini ambako kumeibuka mitaa ya mabanda kama vile Kibera na mengineyo. Kuna umuhimu kwetu sisi Wabunge, kama tunahitaji kupunguza uhamiaji kutoka mashambani hadi mijini, kuleta maendeleo vijijini ili tupunguze uhamiaji wa watu kutoka mashambani hadi mijini. Mara nyingi sababu kuu ya watu kuhamia mijini ni kwamba wao wanajua watapata taa ya stima na barabara nzuri huko mijini. Tukiendeleza vijiji vyetu, tutapunguza uhamiaji wa watu kutoka mashambani hadi mijini. Bw. Naibu Spika, mwisho, ningependa kusema kwamba sisi watu wa Mkoa wa Pwani, badala ya kutegemea tu utalii--- Ijapokuwa kumekuwa na shida Kenya nzima, watu walioathirika zaidi kiuchumi ni watu wa Mkoa wa Pwani. Kwa mfano, Malindi ilikuwa inapokea wageni 500 kwa wiki, lakini juzi tulimsikia Waziri Mkuu mtarajiwa akisema kwamba badala ya idadi hiyo ya wageni 500, tulianza kupata wageni saba kwa wiki. Kwa hivyo, tunataka Serikali itilie maanani viwanda vyetu hasa vile vya matunda kwa sababu kule Mkoa wa Pwani tuna matunda mengi yakiwemo maembe, mananasi na mengineyo. Hii itatuwezesha kupata pesa kupitia njia nyingine kando na utalii. Ninashukuru kwa nafasi hii na ningependa kuiunga mkono Hotuba ya Rais.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is my great pleasure to be in this august House. Let me first start by congratulating you for being elected the Deputy Speaker of this House. Let me also thank God for the historic peace in our country. My names are Mr. Clement Muchiri Wambugu, Member of Parliament for Mathioya Constituency. I stand to contribute and support the President's Speech. I also take this opportunity to thank the people of Mathioya Constituency who gave me the opportunity to come and serve them in this august House. Let me also take the opportunity to commend my predecessor, the hon. Member for Mathioya whom you all know, and who served in this House for a very long time. He made great contributions. I know that most of you know that any time he stood to speak, the whole House kept quiet and everybody listened. I also hope that I will make great contribution to this House and the whole country at large. Let me also take the opportunity to thank our President, Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Raila for signing the Peace Accord. It has given us the opportunity to sit in this House and discuss what is happening in our country. I will not forget to congratulate our mediation team from PNU and affiliates and even the ODM side, who took great courage in discussing and getting the solutions to the problems that were going on in this country. I also want to congratulate the Panel of Eminent Persons who came from all over the world to help us during the time of crisis. We also had Presidents of neighbouring countries, Messrs. Kikwete and Museveni, who came to our country to assist. We cannot forget the African Union (AU), the European Union (EU), the United Nations (UN) and other bodies that contributed towards the peace that we are now enjoying. We also have other countries that came in; the United States of America and even Britain for participating in getting us through the violent times in this country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me also take this opportunity to condole the families of people who lost their lives during the violence that erupted after the December General Elections. Let me also pay tribute to hon. Members who lost their lives during the same time. They were not able to come and contribute in this august House. Lastly, I want to congratulate all of you for the good work that you did yesterday and the unity that you portrayed when you were passing the two very important Bills; the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill and the National Accord and Reconciliation Bill. Those Bills are based on the peace that we got after the Accord was signed by our two Principals. 236 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 As I contribute to the Presidential Speech, there are various points which I might not be able to touch on. But I will only touch on a few. I know that most of the points have been talked about and I do not want to repeat them. My message from the people of Mathioya was to come to this august House and talk the truth. That is because, as we know, the truth shall set us free. The next thing was that I should not talk a lot. I should talk just a few words because they want to see action and not words. So, I will be talking very few words because they are expecting action from this august House. They also told me to come and talk to the people of Kenya and tell them to forget things that we are talking about. We hear each and every day about marginalisation, tribalism and everything else. When we speak on those lines, we ignite the feelings of our people and even ours. They always think and talk the way we do. They always think about tribalism and being marginalised for nothing. They told me to come and tell you that we might be talking about marginalisation. There are communities that look as though they are doing very well, but they have been marginalised for many years. For example, the people of Central Province whom we always say are doing well--- Those are the people who have been living in concentration camps. They comprise of a big population and live in very small pieces of land while others in this country have thousands and thousands of acres. If it is equal opportunities or equal distribution of wealth, then we require everybody in this country to be given an equal chance of owning 1,000 acres in North Eastern Province, North Rift and other places. So, let us forget and stop talking about marginalisation. We have so many resources in this country which need to be shared by all. They are not only just for a few! Let us talk differently. Let us give our people hope, show them the way and not mislead them. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am glad to comment about the Government and our President who, after signing the National Accord, established the National Humanitarian Assistance Fund where Kshs1 billion was set aside. It is for resettlement of the IDPs. But we would like that programme to be run as transparently as possible, so that everybody can benefit. There are some IDPs who feel that they cannot go back to their former homes because of the violence that still persists. We are requesting the Government to compensate those people, so that they can settle in areas of their choice. They should not be necessarily pushed back to the areas where they came from. Some of the IDPs are still in the camps and suffering. The rains are coming and we do not know what we are going to do. The Government should take action immediately, instead of sitting here talking. We need to go out and start assisting those people. I have heard one hon. Member say that we need to go for a retreat. Yes, it is good to go and be taught, especially the new hon. Members, about Standing Orders. But it would be my wish that, rather than spending that money on the retreat, we should go to the IDPs and see how we can assist them with it. We have children of school going age and some of them will be sitting for their exams very soon. Some of them are still living in IDPs camps. We request the Government to exempt those children from paying examination fees, so that they can sit for their exams. They do not have money to pay for their exams. If they do not pay for their exams, they will not be allowed to do them. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me also take this opportunity to commend our Government for giving free primary and secondary education. It is a great move even during this time of problems and trouble. That move will ensure that all our children access education at various levels. Let us look into those areas. Some of us have said that those funds have not reached the schools. It is good for us to encourage our teachers and everybody else. We should tell them the process of accessing those funds. They should have their accounts in order! We know of some people in other areas, as was said at one time by the Minister for Education--- Some of the accounts that were given by the head teachers were fake. They did not belong to the schools. That is why the funds did not reach the various schools. March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 237 From the President's Speech, we learnt that we have got a few more Bills to pass. We were in a hurry to pass the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill and the National Accord and Reconciliation Bill. But we have two other Bills that are coming, especially the Truth and Reconciliation Bill. I felt that it should have been the first one so that, we are able to know the people who killed, funded and planned that violence. That way, they will be brought to book. When the Government will be appointing its Cabinet, the people who were involved in such acts should not be allowed to sit in any of those positions. The President, in his Speech, stated that the Government will come up with a Tourism Bill and others. That is good because tourism has been the backbone of our economy for a long time. It is very sad to see that even a sector like that one---

Order! Your time is up!

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this very important Motion. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to, first of all, thank my constituents for re-electing me for the fourth time to this august House. I would also like to thank God for allowing me to sit in this House now for the fifth time consecutively. Allow me also to thank Members of Parliament for what they did yesterday. It was a historic moment that Members of Parliament from both sides of the House came together to put this country on the right track. I would like to thank our Principals; His Excellency the President, hon. Mwai Kibaki and the Prime Minister-designate, hon. Raila Odinga, for what they did for this country. Now we have one country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, allow me also to thank the Panel of Eminent Persons who, when they saw that Kenya was on fire, came to our aid. Particularly, I would like to thank Dr. Kofi Annan for what he did. He meant his words when he said he would not leave this country until things were on the right track. Evidently, he did not leave this country until things were on the right track. I would like to thank him most sincerely for elevating the talks to the Principals. That is when we were able to strike a balance. I hope this country now will be one and that it will not have to go through the problems it went through. I also hope that we have learnt some lessons. If, indeed, we learnt some lessons, I suppose we will not repeat the same mistakes we made. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I think we have been taking peace for granted for a long time in this country. When we lost it, we saw its importance. We do not want to see this kind of thing happening to our children in future. I think we have to respect each other and each other's opinion all the time. We do not want to see what we saw happening in this country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I thank the President for what he has done for this country. In his Speech, he talked of setting up humanitarian teams to look into what happened after the post- election violence. I hope there will be fairness in the whole exercise. As much as we are talking about the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who are now living in camps, I think we should not forget the fact that there are other people who suffered the same consequences. These people are not necessarily living in IDPs camps. We have a lot of people who got displaced. Some of them have gone to live with their relatives. Their children have had to shift schools because they left their areas of normal operations. However, we do not see them in those camps. Sometimes, we mistake this and say they are peaceful. They are not. I hope when those teams go out, they will identify who actually suffered out of the violence. There are also people who are in those camps who actually were never evicted at all. They chose on their own to leave their homesteads because they felt very unsafe. When we start resettling these people, I suppose we will do it very carefully. I hope we will not push people to go back to where they lived prior to post-election violence. We must take the necessary care to know exactly whether they are willing to go back there or not. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this is a very delicate exercise. It is so delicate that I think we who 238 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 come from the areas where these problems were will be involved in the exercise. We do not want to see an exercise that will be imposed on our people. We want actually to be involved because we know what is happening on the ground. I suppose that if we all of us are involved in the exercise, we will get a permanent solution to this problem. We should avoid appointing some officers who will just force the IDPs to go back to where they came from. I also think that, before we do so, we should address ourselves to the historical problems that may have triggered the crisis. Those of us who come from Rift Valley Province, we experience these kinds of things almost every year. We need to know the root cause of these things. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, sometimes we get into an almost fully-fledged tribal war just out of a small quarrel in a bar. It is a pity that two people quarrel in a bar, then the next day the whole two tribes are at war. There must be something underlying these things. There must be some bitterness that has built up over the years. Let us not just look at it from the surface. We need to go deep into this thing and find out exactly what is this bitterness among these communities. We would like to see the end of this. Nobody wants to see these things happening always. We would like to live together. We would like to see communities co-existing. Let us not treat it like a case that is so simple. It is not simple. We need to look at it much more seriously. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the President talked about improving agriculture, but he never said anything about the farmers who are involved in exports. I have in mind a crop called tea. Today, the tea farmer is almost the poorest farmer in this country. From the face value, we imagine that he is the richest person in this country. He is poor because the exchange rates are very unattractive to him. When we exchange a Kenyan shilling with a dollar, the tea farmer gets almost nothing. So, I think the President, probably, could have gone one step further to urge farmers to add value to their tea before they export it, so that they get the maximum profit. Currently, tea farmers are getting peanuts. Something must be done to alleviate the plight of the tea and horticultural farmers. They are doing so well for this country. But, at the end of the day, they are the ones who actually go home with nothing in their pockets. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, still on agriculture, the prices of fertiliser are almost impossible for a farmer. A bag of fertiliser is costing almost Kshs4,000 and yet, the prices of crops have not improved at all. What are we going to do about it? Why can the Government not be bold enough and subsidise this kind of commodity? Otherwise, unless we do so, we will discourage farmers from actually producing what we need for this country. Very soon, we will be net importers of our own food crops, particularly maize, wheat and rice. The farmer is finding it so difficult to produce these crops. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to commend the President for what he talked about the youth. He said there will be a definite strategy by the Government to make sure that they are brought on board. He talked about job creation for them. The biggest problem that this country is facing today is that the youth are feeling totally neglected. They feel that they are not part of this society. In fact, what happens is that when post-election violence broke out, they found something to do. That is why they caused all the damage we witnessed in this country. They have been staying idle at home without employment. There is nothing happening to them. It is sad that they do not feel as part and parcel of this country. I think we should go towards that direction of engaging our youth to make them part of the society. I think that will be a good thing. But let it not be like the last time, when we promised our youth 500,000 jobs to be created per year and produced nothing. I think what we managed to do was to introduce boda boda and things like that. But that is not what we think is actually a good employment opportunity. Some of the youth have gone to school and are very educated. I think it is up to the Government to offer them jobs. But we can only do that in a good environment where we have peace and investors coming to this country. We think there is going to be employment for our March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 239 youth. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to commend the President for the proposed direct election of mayors and chairmen. In the past, we have witnessed cases of corruption during the election of mayors and chairmen of local authorities. Knowing that we are going to have direct elections of mayors and chairmen of local authorities, I think it is going to be a good thing. With those few remarks, I beg to support.

Thank you very much, Mr, Deputy Speaker, Sir, for allowing me to contribute to the Debate on the Presidential Speech which was delivered during the State Opening of Parliament. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the President's Speech touched on many important areas. I feel that these proposals will help Kenyans in many areas. But some areas which I would like to mention have been left out, which I passionately hold, myself, particularly the livestock sector. I would like to talk about this in a few more minutes. Quite a number of speakers, either in contributing to debate on the Bills we passed yesterday or the Presidential Speech, spoke so much about the post-election violence. As Kenyans, what we witnessed during the first two months of the year; January and February, was not very good. It is important that we reflect on this purposely to learn from it so that this does not happen in the future. Many people keep on pointing fingers at communities but the question is: Where did this begin? Is it the communities who are solely responsible for what had happened, or it is the political leadership? I personally feel, without any apology, that the political leadership is to blame for what had transpired in this good country of ours in the last two months which were not very good for everyone. I say so because, this country from the 2005 Constitutional Referendum was geared up towards moods that were pitting one tribe against another. It is unfortunate that the political leadership which forms the political parties--- I would like to quote the retired President who said in some of his very early barazas: "Siasa mbaya ni maishambaya" Politics is meant for the good. It is not meant for the bad all the time. I would want to say that the political leadership greatly contributed to the conflict. It was unfortunate to see a political leader who has been elected from a constituency unable to go back to ask his people to stop the violence and live together with other Kenyans. It was unfortunate because we are leaders because we were elected by our people. We have some morality, integrity and a good number of attributes which leadership must show. I would like to say that the lessons we learnt from this conflict should be enough to make sure that we do not pit one community against another in future. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to welcome the move by the President to establish the National Humanitarian Assistance Fund which was allocated about Kshs1 billion. Many times, the problem is not resources. The problem is our capacity to handle these resources. I anticipate that this Fund will be implemented through the Ministry of State for Special Programmes which does not have enough capacity to deal with this crisis. The President said that he will establish the Directorate for Resettlement, which is a new outfit. It is important to establish a permanent unit within the Office of the President which will have the capacity in terms of disaster preparedness and implementation. This unit should help us whenever emergencies such as conflict, drought and floods occur. I think Budalangi Constituency is now represented by my good friend, who is seated here. Emergencies that occur must be dealt with timely. There can be no meaningful development unless we plan properly for emergencies, including the conflict which we just witnessed. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have quite a number of proposed legislation and policies which are expected to be dealt with by this Parliament. I was a Member of the Ninth Parliament. I have not actually thanked my people for re-electing me back to this House. God is great, he brought me back. Alhamdulilah! If we formulate policies and enact legislations that are not backed by resources, what the hell is that going to be for Kenyans? Legislative and policy frameworks 240 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 must be backed by resources. A number of people have spoken very strongly about equity in terms of sharing of resources. Some of us get surprised when our colleagues complain about inequity and marginalisation. Those of us from the arid areas of North Eastern Province feel that successive governments have seriously abandoned people of our region. It is about time that the large tribes did something. I would not want to use the word "tribe" because I am a Kenyan. I would talk about regions. Regions that have benefited so much in the past must now allow those in marginal areas to develop at par with them. It was unfortunate that I did not hear from the Presidential Speech anything on the livestock sector. I heard that the anticipated Bills include amendments to the Coffee Act and Sugar Act. In the subsequent months, I expect that the Minister for Livestock and Fisheries Development will introduce amendments to the livestock subsector Act. There are quite a number of restrictive policies and legislative frameworks that are in place. This is particularly the Veterinary Act, which does not allow improvement of markets in our regions. Members of Parliament from this region should articulate these issues effectively. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we would want to very passionately talk about the youth all the time. This Parliament should have a number of strong youth. Youth have been used in this country very wrongly particularly for political gains for the interest of the political leadership particularly at the top. I think the youth deserve to be assisted to go into gainful employment whether it is going to be either in the formal or informal sector. This could be in the informal or formal sector. I would not want to say that jobs were not created in the last Government. Some jobs were created but that is not enough. We would want deliberate efforts made to enable the youth to be actively involved in the overall development in this country. In the past, we had said that the youth are the leaders of tomorrow but they are the leaders of today. We have imagined leadership. Some of us are already going past the youth stage, but we want them to be involved at every level. That way, we will have a holistic development of the youth in all the aspects. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I was happy to note that the management of physical infrastructure featured in the Presidential Address. For us, management of infrastructure has not been a common thing in this country and other African countries. We develop roads, but do we maintain them? We develop water sources, but do we maintain them? If so, how do we effectively do that? In the place I come from, there are boreholes which have been developed through the USAID and the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, but their management has been a core problem all over. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am glad that the Presidential Address had some element of harnessing water resources. It is a good thing to do, but I would want to say that the Ministry of Water and Irrigation must put a lot of effort in institutional strengthening. There are quite a number of institutions that have been put up as a policy change at the Ministry of Water and Irrigation. I would like to thank the then Minister for Water and Irrigation and his Permanent Secretary for doing a lot at that Ministry. However, I would kindly as the Ministry to put a lot of effort in institutional strengthening. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other issue I would want to comment on is the fact that Parliamentarians will now be given an opportunity to get support through research and technical assistance. Hon. Members are very busy people, and I am sure it is going to help us get prepared effectively for parliamentary debates and bringing in legislative issues that will improve the life of Kenyans. Finally, I want to comment on constitution-making. A constitution is there for posterity and a number of people have, time and again, talked about positions being crafted for individuals. I think whatever we did yesterday was in the best interests of this country. We need to accommodate each other. However, whatever we will have in the 12 months in which we envisage to bring in a new Constitution, must bear in mind the needs of Kenyans, not tribes or regions. If we go into it March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 241 with our emotions, like what we saw at Bomas of Kenya in 2003, a walkout by the Government, a complete agitation by one camp that this must be the only thing which will appear--- Thank you Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir; I would want to see a very good Constitution for this country.

Thank you Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me an opportunity to contribute to the Presidential Address. Mr. Speaker, Sir, allow me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Robert Monda, the Member of Parliament for Nyaribari Chache Constituency.

First and foremost, I want to thank God for seeing this country once again go back to normalcy. The trend we had taken was to destruction. That is why I want to thank God for seeing us back to normalcy. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, allow me to thank His Excellency the President and the Prime Minister-designate, hon. Raila Odinga, for quickly going into action and ensuring that we have a peace accord, which this House passed last evening. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me congratulate this House for the kind of spirit that was shown to the nation and the entire world. The enthusiasm with which we passed the two Bills showed that all of us wanted peace for this country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, may I now comment on the Presidential Address and particularly on employment. There have been very good policies passed on employment for our youth. Up to last year, it was very clear to the entire country that Kenyans expected creation of 500,000 jobs per year. I want to believe that they were realised. I want to suggest that the employment of our youth should be as transparent as possible. I want to propose that employment should be devolved to the constituency level as the lowest unit, where we have devolved resources to. As we have the current Government set-up, I want to propose that, in particular, employment should be transparent and put in the media, so that all people are satisfied with the way recruitment is carried out. This should be particularly so with the recruitment of police officers that is going on currently. We shall want to see a situation where each constituency is represented in the police force. I know that there is no constituency without youth who can be recruited into the police force. I am sure that each constituency has youth with the minimum qualifications. Therefore, I want to propose that the current police officers recruitment be made public, so that we can know how recruits will be shared regionally. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the infrastructure of this country has, time and again, been talked about. It has been talked about in this House, and we have been expecting to see improvement, particularly of roads. We do not have a particular road that crosses the country, for example from Mombasa to Uganda or from Mombasa to Tanzania, that has no rough parts. This is so yet our engineers, day in day out, are busy working. The Government is spending resources, yet we cannot have a single complete road in the country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for example, the road that has been built from Nairobi via Nakuru to Busia--- The sections between Nakuru and Eldoret, Nakuru and Kericho and Kericho and Kisumu are difficult to drive on yet, people are working on them day after day. There are roads that were started during the Eighth Parliament, and six years down the line, they have not yet been completed. There are several examples in the region I come from. Work on the road from Keroka via Nyangusu to Trans Mara was started, but a distance of approximately 50 kilometres cannot be completed in seven years! Mr. Speaker, Sir, as much as I congratulate the Minister for Roads and Public Works, I 242 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 would like to propose that contractors who are given contracts by this Government, and are unable to perform, should be blacklisted. They should not only be blacklisted, but should be barred from doing any work for this country. Mr. Speaker, Sir, on the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), I want to inform the House that the effects of the displacement have continued to bite as we continue speaking here about them being resettled. In the last two weeks, in my constituency alone, two secondary school students in an IDP camp hanged themselves. These were effects of displacement. The stigma of displacement is still biting. I want to propose that we should not only have them resettled, but also move with speed to put the situation back to normal. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, as I conclude, I would like to talk about the public transport system. During the Ninth Parliament, rules were put in place so that public transport vehicles had speed governors. They were effective and all of us were happy about it. However, something went wrong. The Government is now quiet about it. Road carnage is on the increase while we have remained insensitive. I want to propose that the Minister for Transport rises to the challenge and ensures that the rules that exist in this country are enforced. We do not need to enact more laws to govern public transport. They exist, although there is a problem in their enforcement. We should move with speed, as a House, in enacting laws that are enforced so that the public gets the full benefits of the laws. With those few remarks, I support.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people of Maragwa for returning me to Parliament, so that I can continue to serve them as well as Kenya. I also want to take this opportunity to congratulate the President for giving this House and the nation a very well thought-out Speech that has, indeed, espoused a lot of policies and put in place envisaged Bills that if seriously taken into account and passed by this House, will lay the foundation for future progress and growth of this country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is true that as Members of Parliament, and as Kenyans, we have in the recent past gone through very difficult moments. We should recognise that all human beings look for a share of what is available. We are talking about the resources of this country; the so- called national cake. All those who have eyes will appreciate that the root cause of our problems is the manner in which the resources of this country have been apportioned, appropriated, mobilised and the manner in which representatives of people; hon. Members of this House have been given a chance or denied the same to oversee their allocation and utilisation. This occasions moments for some regions and persons to feel that they have been deprived that which they consider to rightly belong to them. I want to assure this House, as my friend, Mr. Wambugu, of Mathioya, said, that it is only that person who does not travel beyond their borders who imagines that grass across the fence is greener than where he or she is. Indeed, I know that hon. Members will have an opportunity to travel around the country, to learn and acknowledge for themselves the diversities that this country appears to have. Those who come from certain regions have sometimes been considered and viewed to be well endowed in terms of resources. More often than not, we forget that it is their hard labour and business acumen that puts them a step ahead of their sisters and brothers. We need to cultivate the spirit of hard work, the spirit of wanting to do things by ourselves and wanting to be achievers so that in whichever circumstances; government or leader that is in office, as an individual and as a region, we can appreciate the institutions, systems and mechanisms that can enable us to live and succeed without necessarily having to look at who is the leader at that time. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to appeal that, having come from what we have gone through, as a House of representatives of the people, we must use this occasion to ensure that there is rational privatisation and subsequent utilisation of resources to ensure that they reflect the March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 243 country's development aspirations. I know, and we have been told about a document called Vision 2030. I also know that the President was reported as having said that there is need to harmonise all political parties' manifestos with a view to realising the aspirations and development objectives of Vision 2030. I know that this is a new document which has not been implemented. For the past five years, the Government was working on the five-year Development Plan, the economic recovery strategy on wealth and employment creation. I am glad to note that the policies in the five-year Development Plan were implemented successfully, and effectively to the extent that at the end of the five-year period, Kenya was able to talk about a 7.0 per cent economic growth rate, having come from nearly a negative growth rate in 2002, of 0.6 per cent. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have been told, we know and we have learnt that between 1963 and 1964, when Kenya gained its Independence, we were at par in terms of growth and development with other countries which are now called "newly-industrialised countries", whose people are currently enjoying very high standards of living. It is regrettable to note that Kenya is not a poor country. We are well endowed. What has been lacking is co-operation and proper leadership that centres on the interests of wananchi . I want to urge my colleagues, hon. Members of this House, that we have an onerous opportunity to ensure that we put in place systems and focus on the real needs of the people who elected us. The people who elected us do not care what you are going to achieve. All they care about is if they can put food on the table for themselves and their families, probably twice a day. Are we able to come up with policies, as Members of Parliament, that will ensure that our people are able to take their children to school from Standard One all the way to university because we have put in place mechanisms that facilitate and enable them? Are we able to put in place polices that ensure that when they do work, they get enough to decently cloth themselves and their families? Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, upon careful analysis of our economic potential, you will note that, as a country, we have what it takes to go where we deserve to go. We have sectors that have been doing very well. Our tourism is a giant that has been lying dormant. We know that for about three years when there was peace and tranquillity in this country, tourism was able to catch up and, in fact, become the number one foreign exchange earner for this country. But the backbone of our economy still remains agriculture. I would like to urge whoever is going to occupy the seat at Kilimo House to ensure that agriculture, from where a majority of our people really derive their livelihood, is taken care of. He or she should ensure that Bills and policies are brought to this House to foster agricultural institutions like Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC), Kenya Farmers Association (KFA) and others. That will increase productivity from our farming units, whether they are small-scale or large-scale. We should ensure that land use and land reforms attendant to---

Your time is up!

Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, with those few remarks, I beg to support.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this important Motion. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, at the outset, I would like to introduce myself. I am hon. Wycliffe Ambetsa Oparanya. I represent Butere Constituency. I want to take this opportunity to thank the people of Butere for electing me to this House for the second time. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, since this is my first time to take the Floor, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate my fellow Members of Parliament and you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for having been elected to be the Deputy Speaker for the Tenth Parliament. I also want to thank hon. 244 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 Kibaki and hon. Raila for putting their interests aside and signing the Peace Accord. I do not want to forget the African prominent personalities who assisted us to get the peace that we are now enjoying. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the crisis that occurred during the last two months has given us an opportunity to actually know our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as a nation. It has given us a big lesson that will enable us to evaluate our governance structures. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I happen to have represented the Ninth Parliament in the Pan African Parliament, which has its headquarters in South Africa. Last October, there was an African Peer Review Mechanism Report on Kenya. It said very good things about Kenya; that Kenya is one of the countries that is able to manage its Budget by sourcing about 95 per cent of its revenue locally. Kenya is only able to just borrow about 5 per cent from outside. But, in the end, the Report recommended that Kenya has a major weakness. One major weakness that was pointed out in that Report was a colonial Constitution. The Report says that the Kenyan Constitution is the most talked about Constitution in the whole world. The Report went further to say that Kenya needed the international community to help it get a new Constitution. With what has happened, the Panel of African Eminent Persons will really help us, as a nation, to get a new Constitution. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other major weakness that was pointed out was uneven distribution of resources. I was in the last Parliament and my constituency got only Kshs30 million in the entire five years for development, out of a Budget of Kshs360 billion! This is 0.008 per cent! Even if we have a new Constitution, unless the issue of distribution of resources in this country is addressed within that Constitution, we will be cheating ourselves. The distribution of wealth must be even! I must thank the former Member of Parliament for Ol Kalou, Eng. Karue Muriuki, for introducing the Motion on the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) to this Parliament. Were it not for CDF, there would have been no development in my constituency. I know very well that one constituency, in the year 2007/2008 - the one we are just about to complete - got Kshs250 million to help in water projects. That is just in one particular constituency! My constituency only got Kshs30 million in the entire five-year period! Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, a Motion came here--- The Fiscal Analysis and Management Bill was debated on the Floor of this House. It reached the Committee Stage, but the Minister for Finance blocked that particular Bill! That Bill was meant to ensure that before the Budget is presented to this House, it is interrogated by that Committee so that the allocation of the Budget money is done evenly throughout the country. I would like to appeal, through you, Mr. Deputy Speaker that, that particular Bill should, again, be re-introduced to this House. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in his Presidential Speech five years ago, the President mentioned about the Sugar Act. Even during the recent Presidential Speech, he said that there will be amendments to the Sugar Act, 2001. I come from a sugar-cane growing area and I can tell you that we have had a raw deal. We have talked about the Sugar Act severally. We were frustrated here on the Floor of this House by the former Minister for Agriculture. This was because some of the powers were being removed from his office. I hope that those people who will be appointed to the Cabinet will not look at their interests first, but at the interests of wananchi. We have talked about amendments to the Sugar Act all along. Half of the provisions of the Sugar Act cannot be implemented and that is why we came up with amendments. We spent a lot of money and we even went for workshops in Mombasa and met the stakeholders, but the amendments were not debated by the Ninth Parliament. We know very well that the structures that were set up in the Sugar Act, namely, the out- growers and the millers continue to milk the farmers. The major shareholder in the sugar industry is the Government, which owns Muhoroni, Nzoia and Chemilil sugar factories. Even 20 per cent of Mumias Sugar Factory is owned by the Government. The Government keeps on talking about March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 245 amendments to the Sugar Act while it is the major culprit. We have obsolete machinery. Who is supposed to replace those obsolete machinery? It is the Government because it is the one that owns the sugar companies. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Government is unwilling to increase the production of sugar because it wants to continue importing sugar. That is where the money is. We have always extended the COMESA safeguard period. We were given a period of up to April this year, but it has now been extended for another four years. Last time when they extended the period, they said that the Government would make sure that there would be enough money to increase the production of sugar in this country. This has not happened. In the entire five years, there was no budgetary provision for the sugar farmers. Luckily, the tea farmers got Kshs600 million in the current Budget. The pyrethrum farmers also got a similar amount of money, but the sugar farmers got nothing. With those few remarks, I beg to support.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. We feel a bit worried because the women are being marginalised in this House. Yesterday, during a very major debate for the country, other than the Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, who moved the Bill, no other woman was given a chance to contribute. This is very serious. You must have views from the both genders. Marginalising one gender is worse than even marginalising---

Order, hon. Mugo! You are out of order! For your information, it was the wish of the House yesterday to close debate on the Bills. It is the House that decides on how much it has to contribute on a Bill. But when the mood of the both sides of the House, all along, was that the debate should be closed, then you cannot blame the Chair for that. For now, I think the gender aspect of this House is being taken care of. We will still continue taking care of it.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. We were here the whole afternoon from 2.30 p.m. We were on our feet just like our counterpart, the male gender. Actually, we wore orange, a very bright dress. You cannot have noticed that we were rising since 2.30 p.m. I agree with the mood of the House wanting to close debate, but this does not mean that this should cut all women off.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, my name is Abdikadir, the Member of Parliament for Mandera Central. I wish to support the Motion on the Presidential Speech. I wish to associate myself with the other hon. Members, who congratulated the President for the exposition of public policy. I wish to touch on the new Bills that the President said would be introduced, namely, the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission Bill and the issue about ethnicity. I believe that the President and hon. Raila, when they signed the Accord, did this country a lot of service. I believe what they did resulted in yesterday's events. This country had a glorious day and this Parliament showed the way for the country. I believe that this is the start of the hard work. Really, the taste of the pudding is in the eating. The next few months will show whether this country can really take the changes that are in store. I specifically think of the constitutional amendment and the constitutional review that is required to carry through what we started yesterday. The Constitution of this country is a patch-work and yesterday, it suffered another patch. The Constitution of this country has been talked about a lot. Time has come for the Constitution review. This cannot be delayed any more for the simple reason that the Constitution cannot work the way it was yesterday. We amended Section 3 of the Constitution yesterday. This is called the supremacy clause, which is supposed to be supreme. We made it a general rule yesterday because we provided for a proviso that is outside that supremacy. That cannot work for long. You heard many of my learned friends 246 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 allude to the problematic issues that the amendment was going to raise. This will definitely bog us down unless the Constitution is amended in whole. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, one hon. Member yesterday talked about Section 2A and the fact that he was ashamed when that section was carried. I disagree with him. I think the most shameful section in the Constitution was Section 127 of the Constitution, which was amended in 1992. That section completely withdrew the Constitution from the former Northern Frontier District (NFD). It basically suspended the entire constitution in the former NFD with the result that there was no protection to human rights in the whole of that region. This resulted in the massacre that you are aware of. This also resulted in the State being the sponsor of that massacre. Unfortunately, we had very terrible two months. The state has been one of the actors with many other actors. In northern Kenya, the tragedy was sponsored by the State. The State used this House to withdraw the Constitution in northern Kenya and then went ahead and enacted the Indemnity Act, which is still in force, to try and shield Government officials who were responsible for some of those atrocities in terms of civil liability. I believe that time has come for this Constitution to be amended so that we have, as in the words of hon. ole Ntimama, a new Constitution. I disagree with him in the sense that we really have a Constitution, but it is such a patch-work of sections that it does not work as it is supposed to. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the President talked about Vision 2030 in his Speech. Time has come for this country to take its place in the developed nations of this world. Everything is there going for this country. We have the human resource and other resources in terms of endowments from nature. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, an hon. Member referred to something called the "Livestock Act". It does not exist. I have not heard of a statute called "Livestock Act". That shows the inequities in terms of our law-making process and resource allocation. For instance, we have heard of tea and sugar cane farmers as poor as they maybe, but we have not heard much mention of the livestock sub-sector, especially in terms of resource allocation. I am happy that through Vision 2030, that region will be getting some form of attention. Going back to the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) and the ethnicity issue, a time has come for this country to face its dark history. It will be a very difficult time. I do not think we are aware of the issues that will face this country when we dig into our dark past. It can only go through if we sustain the good will that was seen in this House yesterday and the spirit shown by our two principal leaders in the previous two weeks. If we do so, then there is hope for this country. If we go back to the clock and dagger politics of one tribe against another or one party against the other, then we will have doomed this country. We will have missed an opportunity to correct our previous mistakes. I support the Presidential Speech delivered to this House on 6th March, 2008.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this Motion. I will start with self-introduction. I am Mr. ole Lankas, the Member for Narok South. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to join the rest of my colleagues in supporting the Motion. I believe that the Presidential Speech was reconciliatory. It is also guiding in terms of policy formulation. It has also given us a basis on which to build the foundation of all that we are talking about in this House. So, I entirely support the Presidential Speech to this House. We have been talking about various issues, reconciliation, peace and unity for this country. I am one of those who support reconciliation. I support the peace building and healing process that we are going through. However, there are things that we must say. We are talking about reconciliation and healing of the country, but it is not good when hon. Members stand here and make utterances which make some of us look back and wonder whether we are really being honest March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 247 or sincere when we talk of peace in this House. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, what comes to mind is the kind of utterances that we have heard from some of our colleagues. Unfortunately, some of them are not in this House now. Some of the actions portrayed in this House, even by very senior colleagues, some of whom are Government Ministers, are retrogressive. We are saying we are healing the country, but they are still going back, holding the tail of the ghosts of ethnic clashes. Is it fair? We are saying, what happened has happened. We have witnessed human suffering. People have been killed. Some people have been maimed and property destroyed. There is no small or big pain. Pain is pain. People have been killed in Eldoret; I have to mention this. People have been killed in Naivasha. So, there is no small pain and big pain. We all felt the pain. Every leader in this House, I believe, must have felt the pain. So, the issue of isolating people or cases, will not do us any good. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have read in the Press that there will be prosecution. We have heard some hon. Members of this House say that some leaders should not be in the Cabinet. I do not know whether they have already made a judgement. Are we serious when we talk about peace? How can we have peace when there is fear somewhere? Can we rise above this, hon. Members? We need peace. That is when we can have peace. We cannot talk about peace while behind the scenes, other things are happening. It cannot happen. So, I stand here to say that there is still an element of fear. If we are ready for reconciliation, unless words have lost meaning, we should settle for it. When we talk of reconciliation, is there a level of reconciliation we can go to and then continue with other things or do we talk of total reconciliation? When we say that we are healing the country, what are we healing it from? We were told that the police are "going on with investigations", if I may quote the words of the Attorney-General when he spoke here the other day, and yet they are the prime suspects. How can they investigate themselves? How much independent are they? Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we cannot isolate other people. When you sit here and listen to some people talk, you get the impression that there is already a determined effort to take some action, which is not coming out very clearly in this House. I also want to mention the issue of re-settlement of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). I want to imagine that IDPs are a result of the post-election violence. However, there are people who have been misplaced, and are still being misplaced. I want to come up with the terminology "Internally Misplaced Persons (IMPs)" to refer to people who are living - where they are living - thinking that they are in the right place, and yet they are not. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, knowingly or unknowingly, some people think that they are in the right places, but they are not. The issue of settlement of people in the Mau Forest is a case in point. This is a problem I have inherited in my constituency. The problem has continued throughout the last two regimes, but no solution has been found. Innocent people were cheated into buying forest land and then, at some point, they were evicted. At some other point, they were allowed to go back to the forest. The most interesting part of the problem is that the issue was even used as a campaign tool in the last general election. People were flown there in choppers, where they told people on the ground to stop any eviction. In fact, one of the District Commissioners in that area became a casualty as he tried to do the right thing. He was telling people not to move to the catchment areas. In doing so, he was transferred. People on the ground were, again, told to stop the eviction. So, the problem is now back with us. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, Mau Forest is a catchment area. Everybody knows how important it is not only to Kenya, but also to countries beyond our borders. Innocent people are living there. The forest is being degraded every day. Trees are being cut every day. We now have a crisis. In 248 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 fact, as I speak, I have a problem. Members of Parliament from the areas where those people moved to buy land in the Mau Forest are still following up the matter to ensure that the welfare of their people is taken care of. So, we have a crisis. There is a crisis as a result of corruption. Those who sold the forest land are known, yet no action has been taken by the Government. Money was taken from the people and they cannot access the land they bought. I am standing on the Floor of this honourable House to address the issue of the Mau catchment area. We cannot allow the degradation of that catchment area. We must protect the Mau Forest. This is an issue of misplaced people through no fault of their own. They just found themselves in a crisis. Those are some of the issues that I needed to bring forth. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the issue of tourism is very crucial for this country. The Maasai Mara Game Reserve is one entity that you cannot avoid when you talk about tourism. Sometime last year, the Maasai Mara was recognised internationally as the 7th Wonder of the World. But what has the Government done to enhance that recognition? You cannot access the Maasai Mara now. The roads leading to the Maasai Mara are impassable. In fact, I was shocked to hear one of my colleagues, the hon. Member for Malindi, talking of the Government's concentration in the Maasai Mara. It is not there; we need to do a little bit more. Maasai Mara is being threatened by grabbers, and that is a known fact. What has the Government done to protect that entity, which is doing a lot for this country? Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other issue which I wanted to mention is the issue of education. For all these years, there have been regions in this country which have never performed well in examinations. There are districts which have been condemned to be the last ten districts always for over 20 years. With those few remarks, I support.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, my name is hon. Wavinya Ndeti, Member of Parliament for Kathiani Constituency. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Almighty God for giving me the opportunity to lead the people of Kathiani and Kenya. Many thanks to the Kathiani people for allowing me to be their Member of Parliament, and believing in my leadership skills. I thank them very much. I will not forget to thank my family, especially my father and my late mother for believing in me, and believing that I am capable of leading the people of Kathiani. Thank you very much. May God rest my mother in solemn peace until we meet again. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is always said that what starts badly ends up well. The way the 10th Parliament started was not good. There was a lot of bloodshed and we lost many people. But we pray to God that from now on that Kenya will be peaceful, where neighbours can live together. It was very sad for neighbours, who had lived together, to just wake up one day and start killing each other. I can tell you that most of the people who suffered were women and children. I know that from where we have started and the changes that I have seen Members of Parliament trying to make, we are going to have a peaceful and new Kenya. Our President and the Prime Minister- designate said so. So, hon. Members let us come together and bring peace to Kenya. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I believe that we hon. Members are the blessed ones. If we look at the Bible, God chose Moses and gave him the ten commandments. It is high time we made the ten commandments for Kenya by changing the Constitution. We would like to make laws that will benefit our children and their offsprings. Let us look at the future. Let us change the Constitution with our children and their offsprings in mind. I know that the Members of Parliament who are here now are capable of doing that, and we will do that by the grace of God. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to touch on the distribution of resources. For a long time in Kenya, there has been an imbalance in the distribution of resources. We need to look at the areas that have been marginalised and try to balance distribution of resources. If I may talk about the land issue, we have many people who own big chunks of land, while March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 249 we let poor people fight for the small pieces of land that we have. We welcome foreigners to Kenya and as we do that, we would want them to own pieces of land, but the bigger chunk of land should really belong to the Kenyans themselves. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I believe that by changing the Constitution we are going to put in place laws that will be able to take care of the land issues in Kenya. I also would like to talk about the title deed. If we look at most of the areas, especially in Eastern Province, people own chunks of land for generations, but most of them do not have title deeds. How do we expect our people to enhance themselves economically if they cannot use the title deed as security. The Government should look into that and issue title deeds to our people. I would like to speak about water. I come from an area where we have a problem of water. It is not only in Eastern Province, I am sure that other parts of Kenya have water problems. We have rivers which drain into the Indian Ocean. It is high time we learnt how to harvest water. We should be able to hold the water that we let go into the Indian Ocean. The water that goes to the Indian Ocean is affecting the environment by raising the sea level. The water that is causing us problems after flowing into the Indian Ocean should be retained inland so as to help us. I kindly and humbly ask the Ministry of Water and Irrigation to look at the rivers of Kenya and try to help us to retain water on land, so that our people can be assisted economically. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to congratulate the Government on the construction of roads. If you look at Eastern Province, the Government is working on the roads and we applaud it for that. However, we would like it to look at the feeder roads. We cannot have one good major road and the other major feeder roads are not well constructed. So, we would like the Government to look at that. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to touch on the issue of electricity. For sure, most of the electricity in the country is generated in the Eastern Province. I can assure you that not even a quarter of the Eastern Province is lit. The House will agree with me that it is unacceptable for electricity to be generated in Parliament and then Parliament itself is not lit. So, it is high time we looked into the issue of trying to light the areas that are not lit. I should be speaking on behalf of Kenya but I am also speaking on behalf of Eastern Province. We need to have our areas lit. Our children are lagging behind on the computerization programme, because we do not have electricity. That should be looked into, because we want our children to compete with the world. Information technology is their future, and we should invest more in what will really bring our children to the same level with the outside world. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other thing that I would like to touch on is education. We need to invest more in our schools so that, again, our children can compete with the outside world. We need to make sure that education is compulsory for children up to Form IV level. No child should, really, not go to school. Whatever efforts the Government needs to put in place to ensure that children go to school, should really be adopted. So, we need our children to go to school. Still on schools, we need to invest in facilities like laboratories. That way, our children can be more exposed to the science world and, especially, information technology. I believe no school in Kenya should stay without computers. Schools in Kenya should all be computerised because, whether we like it or not, that is the future for our children. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I can stand here and say that I am a very proud Kenyan. I am one of the first pioneers of computer projects for schools. I promise my fellow Kenyans that I will not relent in that effort. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other issue that I would like to touch on concerns the youth. Our youth are demoralised, unemployed and devoid of hope, resulting in destructive behaviour. We need to quickly find out a way of addressing the massive waste of human resources in the future. There is a lot of unemployment among the youth. The House will agree with me that it is not that 250 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 our youth are not educated. They are well educated. Our problem is not education as I speak now. Our problem is employment. We need to create processes where we can, really, have our youth employed. How can we help our youth? We have the Youth Enterprise Development Fund which should really be channelled directly to the constituencies and ring-fenced for the youth. That will help them create job opportunities for themselves. So, I would kindly request Members of Parliament to look into that and ensure that the money that we get for development goes to the youth, especially, the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) money. Each constituency should get its money for the youth and spend it on them.

Your time is up! Yes, Ms. Noor!

Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I support the Motion on the Presidential Speech. I am sure most of the issues I touched on were mentioned in the President's Speech. I beg to support.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this time. My names are Ms. Sophia Abdi Noor, Nominated Member of Parliament, ODM. I wish to take this chance to thank my political party leadership for nominating me to this House. I feel very humbled and honoured. I want to sincerely and in a very special way say "Thank you very much." Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want also to congratulate you for being elected the Deputy Speaker of this House. I wish also to appreciate the efforts of the two Principals. I really want to say that they displayed a leadership that this country really needed at this moment in time. It is a leadership that we, really, expected them to show at this critical moment. I would like to say that we are proud of these two sons of this country. I must also say: Congratulations to them! Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I wish also to salute this House for the history it made yesterday; the unity it showed and the leadership it portrayed. That is what is expected from us, as leaders, to unite this country. I must say: Thank you very much for that leadership that we have taken as a group. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I wish also to commend the President for the focused Speech. Noted with a lot of interest is the establishment of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Committee. That interest is informed by my background, where I come from. It is informed because of the historical injustices that my community and myself, as an individual, have gone through. You will agree with me that we have gone through a systematic marginalisation in this country. It is only the region that I come from that has gone through the emergency law. It was just lifted in 1997. It had been there since the emergency time! There have been Government-initiated massacres in my region where, uniformed and armed personnel who are supposed to protect our lives killed some people in that region, robbed and looted their property, raped women and torched houses. That is what has really devolved my interest in this particular Commission. I urge those people who will be mandated to implement that particular Commission to stand above petty politics; to be people who will have, really, taken this country in the right direction. They should bring the truth and address the critical issues that have divided this country. This country has been divided very badly! It is because of those who have caused the post-election violence that we have seen. It is also because of the injustices, resource allocation, discrimination and--- A colleague contributed and said that we should forget about marginalisation. I believe that we cannot forget about the marginalization. We can only forget about marginalization when this particular Commission really does its work properly. That is the only time we will forget marginalisation. We will delete it from our vocabulary in this country. But as long as that Commission will not rise up to the occasion and face the challenges head on, I do not think we are March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 251 going to do the right thing for this country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I wish also to contribute on the free primary education. The free primary education is a noble programme. It is an incident-based policy that is in existence. It is a policy that is working. It is also a policy that has freely promoted the enrolment of pupils in schools in particular regions. But I have my own reservation. My reservation is that the policy has not addressed the critical gaps that exist in the education sector. There are children, as I speak, who are still learning under trees. Children from pastoral communities, children who learn under trees, children who go without water and other facilities are required to compete with those who are in schools in Nairobi. Those schools have all the facilities, including buses, computers, laboratories and everything. They are put at par. They are given the same amount of money. I urge this House and the Ministry of Education to look into that particular policy. That is because it is not addressing the critical gaps, imbalances and inequalities that are existing in this country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I also wish to talk about the poverty alleviation programmes. We have good documents on the poverty alleviation programmes, which are not implemented. Most of these documents are shelved. We have, for example, the Poverty Reduction Commission (PRC), which has a very good human resource. This group of people have gone round this country. They have carried out a need assessment all over the country. They have done what is required, as a Commission. But this Commission is toothless. They do not have the resources to implement what they have seen on the ground. This includes dealing with the problems they have seen using the information that they have. They have a good data bank. I was a member of that particular Commission. I know how I was frustrated when I went all over this country to see the kind of problems that exist. Let us be honest to one another. Let us give those groups of people and individuals, whom we have assigned some duties in this country, a chance to implement their programmes. I am sure they will implement wonderful programmes. Let us not be mean and keep everything to ourselves. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, on the same note, there is also the Gender Commission, which was established in this country. The Commission has the human resource that is required, but they do not have the resources to run effectively. When we talk about gender, people think this concerns women affairs. The issue of gender does not concern women affairs only. It concerns issues that affect all of us across the board. We want to give those who are not in the leadership positions the opportunity and space to gain them. Tomorrow, the majority might be affected. Therefore, I am pleading with this House, at this time when we are making history, please, because you never know that tomorrow you will be the people who will be affected, do something today so that tomorrow, when you will be the people who will say "We, men are marginalised.", you can use the policy you develop today. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to conclude by touching on the issue of livestock. The livestock industry is key in this country. It is an industry that has been neglected. This industry has not been given the necessary attention that it deserves. If you look at a country like Botswana, you can imagine the kind of income they are making from the livestock industry. They are making more money than we are making from the tourism industry. I am asking this House to really empower the livestock industry, just the way we are empowering the coffee and tea industries. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, with those few remarks, I beg to support the Motion.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am Mr. Barnabas Muturi Mwangi. I represent the people of Kiharu Constituency. I want to thank you for allowing me to support the Presidential Address. First, I wish to thank the principals, His Excellency the President and Mr. Raila, for creating an environment that has allowed us to discuss the issues that have affected our country for the last two months. I want to emphasise some of the points that have been raised by my colleagues 252 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 in the House. However, I want to look at some of the points from a different point of view. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we talk a lot about equity in distribution of resources, land tenure and ownership. We also speak about slums. I would rather call them "unplanned settlements" in our urban areas. Very few of us have had time to visit Mathare, Mukuru and Kibera slums. I am glad that His Excellency the President mentioned the issue of slums. Kenyans living in these slums are no less men or women than other people who live in rural constituencies, yet they do not own anything. Most of the people living in these areas do not own houses, if those shanties they live in are houses, neither do they own land. Those who own this land, either the Government or individuals, care less to improve the infrastructure in these areas. When we come to address this matter, can we discuss it with a moral and a humane face, as far as this issue of unplanned settlements in Kenya is concerned? Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, several hon. Members have already talked about issues affecting the youth. We have the Youth Enterprise and Development Fund (YEDF). I wonder whether the Ministry of State for Youth Affairs has ever found out whether the funds that were allocated in the last Parliament were ever fully utilised by the youth. The conditions that have been set by the banks have been very unfortunate. The youth cannot access these funds because of the strict conditions that have been put by the banks. In actual fact, this Parliament should not even think of lending the youth these funds. We should create a policy where this Fund will be used as seed money to the poor youth we have all over the country. There is no need of asking them to go to the banks; they will not get this money. The conditions are very strict. The youth are suffering. Some of the reasons are created by our institutions. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, while we congratulate the two principals on what they have done in creating this kind of atmosphere, can we address issues affecting the agricultural sector, which is the backbone of this country? Many of us have talked about the issue of coffee. Who told hon. Members that the peasant coffee farmers out there are enjoying any profits? That is not true. We had better look into this issue carefully. The small scale farmers cannot afford to produce quality coffee. The cost of inputs has escalated to a point where only the rich can carry on coffee farming. In the last Parliament, the former Minister created a policy of reviving some societies that were not productive, yet those which were productive were supposed to maintain these moribund societies. Let us liberalise the coffee industry. The small scale coffee farmers are suffering. They are no better than the farmers in the sugar industry. At least the sugar industry is lucky, because the Government can allow people to import sugar into this country. Why has the Government not taken the bold step and subsidized fertilizer production in this country? Some of us have been to countries where a whole country has a Minister in charge of fertilizer, so that they can support the small scale farmers. What has gone wrong for the last 40 years, so that the Government cannot see the need to support the production of fertilizer in this country, so that small scale farmers, who are growing maize in the Rift Valley, and those growing coffee or rice, feel that the Government is supporting them? The infrastructure has collapsed of most parts in this country. When I was young I was able to travel from Nairobi to Moyale District. Who tells you that the tourism industry can only flourish in the Coastal area? Why do you not take a bus and go to Marsabit District? I wish this Parliament was one day required to address the nation from the highlands of Marsabit District. Tourism can be everywhere in this country. What we require is peace and security. The laws of this country urgently need to be looked into. We have the military. Who tells you that we can only send our men and women to Sudan and elsewhere for peace keeping, while we are at war amongst ourselves? Why do we not use our machinery and military equipment to improve the infrastructure? Why are people killing each other in Laikipia? Why are they in the forest? Why does the army not get there and construct roads and water holes that will improve the March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 253 living standards of our people? We have the resources. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I now want to dwell a little more on the issue of education. I have worked in the Ministry of Education for close to 33 years. More emphasis than is being given today should be given to education. It is not bad to have free education. I congratulate the Government for that. We have talked about the free secondary education. But are we offering quality education? We have got to change the attitude of our people, who want to fight for pieces of land. We should take interest in the quality of education that we can offer in this country, and be able to export human resource, as was alluded to by His Excellency the President yesterday. We are fighting for land and yet the quality of education is below par. We are also talking about Free Primary Education (FPE) and yet the children who need the best care during their formative years in early childhood training have not been considered. The Education Act, Cap.211 of 1968 is moribund. It is completely out of place and yet we are talking about offering free education. Let us put in place an Act that will enable our young people get quality education and, at least, enhance other areas in the education sector. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we always talk about livestock development. We are not inventing a wheel when it comes to improving our livestock. Whoever becomes the Minister for Livestock should take people to Northern India to see what those people do in the desert. Those people milk buffaloes! Why can we not tame this wild animals if we cannot afford to get milk from our cows? We are not re-inventing the wheel. What we want is to get people who are going to implement Government policies to the letter. One of the biggest problems in this country is corruption. We should change the Constitution and then talk about equity. When we change the Constitution, we should address the problem of unequal creation of constituencies. It should not be one person to one person! How do you expect a Member of Parliament who is representing 300 persons to be given the same service as that of a Member of Parliament who is representing 50,000 people? Equity should be applied across the board in all aspects of our lives. With those remarks, I beg to support the Motion.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to address this House. First, I would like to thank the almighty God for giving me the chance to represent my Constituency. I would also like to thank the people of Alego Usonga for having overwhelmingly elected me to this House. I can assure them that I am not going to fail them. I would like to thank my party, ODM, for having given me the nomination. This is because without that nomination, once again, I would not be here. I would like to extend my congratulations to all my colleagues, Members of Parliament, who were elected to the Tenth Parliament. All of you will agree with me that the 2007 General Election was one of the hardest ever fought in this country and all the people who made it deserve a pat on the back. The 2007 General Election held on 27th December, was overwhelmingly supported by all Kenyans and the voter turnout was very high all over the country. That is a testimony that Kenyans were very determined to change those who represent them in this House. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, of course, we know what happened after that, but that is water under the bridge and I think we should not dwell too much on what has passed. We should dwell on the lessons we have learnt from what happened so that we can have the strength to move on. In the last three months, this country saw everything that we needed to see. We saw things that, at times, made some of us feel like we did not want to be associated with the country. There are things that happened that you would have never believed would happen in this country. My son, who is 18 years old, called me one time during the fights and demonstrations. Since he is out of the country, he was wondering what was happening at home. To them, it looked like the whole country was on fire. The children felt very insecure to the effect that at one stage 254 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 they felt sorry for themselves. I also felt sorry for myself. For the children who were out of the country, they were beginning to feel that everybody else was treating them like lepers because Kenya was no longer the glorious country it used to be. He would be asked: "Now what is happening?" "Are you homeless?" "Will you be able to go home during the holidays?" "Can we house you in our home?" So, the boy was very much afraid, but I assured him that something was going to happen. I believed that the leadership in this country was going to do something. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, probably, what should have been done was not done early enough because if it was, perhaps, some of the killings and damage that we experienced would have been avoided. Anyway, the saying goes; "Better late than never." I believe that this country will never be the same again. We will never be the same again for good reasons. Sometimes God allows us opportunities. Sometimes he allows bad things to happen so that we learn from them. I think what happened in this country, to me, was good in a way because it was a wake up call. It made us search ourselves and look deeper in some of the inequalities and the bad things that we have been doing to each other. I am sure that from now onwards, we are going to make sure that Kenya does not go back to what it went through. It was a bad experience which we would not like to go back to. There are two very important Bills that we passed yesterday; the National Accord and Reconciliation Bill and the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill. Bills are written on pieces of paper and passed in the House. The two Bills were passed very quickly, but what is going to make sure that what we passed here stays and works so that this country can change, is goodwill, trust, selflessness and love for this country and one another. Otherwise, if it is just a question of passing Bills, we can pass so many of them, but if the goodwill is not there, nothing will come out of it. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, all of us who are in the Tenth Parliament should be proud because history was in the making yesterday. We are going to end up in history as hon. Members of Parliament who made the important changes that are going to change this country for the good and forever. There is enough in this country for everybody. We have enough resources. It is just a question of distribution. It is just a question of being less greedy. What is bad is that some of us would like to have everything. However, the truth is that there is only so much you can acquire as a person. You can only sleep on one bed a night. You can only eat, at most, three meals a day, but you can survive on one meal. So, when individuals want to acquire so much land, sometimes I wonder what it is for! Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, yesterday, the hon. Member for Kisumu Rural educated us here that the only piece of land that we are going to inherit when we go up there - some of us will probably remain here - is three feet by six feet by four feet. That is it! So, that is the only land that we should be fighting to get. For the rest, you will have it and leave it here. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I believe that if the resources in this country are distributed fairly, there will be no in-fighting at all. This House is charged with a lot of responsibility. It should ensure that the laws that are passed are implemented. There are many laws and Bills that are passed in this House. They are passed but nothing happens after that. I think we should go back to the archives and look at some of the Bills that have been passed before, and ensure that they are implemented. On the agricultural policy, there is a lot which has not been done. If you look at agriculture, all regions of this country have something they can contribute. The North Eastern region has cattle and goats. If we specialise in ensuring that enough cattle and goats that this country needs for consumption and export comes from North Eastern region, I think they will have enough resources to take care of that region. However, we do not do that! The policy on tea is not enough. This country produces one of the best teas in the world. Good tea still fetches a lot of money in the world. I agree with the hon. Member who talked about March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 255 value addition. I think this House should come up with a Bill that dictates the percentage of tea that should leave this country as value added tea, so that we can ensure that we maximise the resources that we earn from our tea. At the moment, a lot of tea, maybe up to 80 per cent of the tea, leaves here as an unfinished product. It goes out, it is packed and then it comes back and is sold to us at almost 200 or 300 per cent more than what we sell it for at the auction. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the same goes for fish. We should have a fish policy so that most of the fish that we produce is processed in the regions where it is caught. If that is done, those regions will have enough resources to take care of their development. With those few remarks, I beg to support.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir! At long last, you have seen me! My names are Mr. Maina wa Kamau, Member for Kandara Constituency, Muranga South District. First, I would like to thank the people of Kandara for giving me this chance to come and represent them in Parliament. I promise them that I will do my best. I said that I will not come and sleep in the House. I will give them my best. They will get the best out of me. So, I thank them so much wherever they are. Secondly, I would like to take this opportunity to thank His Excellency President Mwai Kibaki and hon. Raila for the historic moment yesterday. We all witnessed it. They did a good job because Kenyans will stop killing one another. We are going to have peace. When there is peace, the economy will improve, people will get jobs and the country will move ahead very fast. So, it was historic and very good that they sat together. At times, we were left wondering why they never sat together before. Nobody was going to kill the other. They shook their hands and the country came back to normalcy. It is great that they sat together. They are now together and the country is going to move forward. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, thirdly, I would like to say pole sana to Kenyans, especially those in the Rift Valley, who lost their lives. At times you ask yourself: "Did all those people have to die?" Did they have to die so that we could create three positions of the prime minister and two deputies? Why did we not sit together earlier and avoid the deaths of those people? Those people voted peacefully, went back to their homes and then started dying. It was unfortunately and I would like to say pole sana to those who lost their loved ones. We hope that such kind of a thing will never happen again. I am asking the Government to speed up Agenda No.4. We all know what it is. It is crucial and we must ensure that it is discussed in this Parliament so that the people can live in peace. I also would like to request the Government to ensure that all the IDPs are taken back to where they belong. It is so unfortunate! You will find that somebody who was living in Burnt Forest in Rift Valley is in Murang'a. They are displaced! We try to comfort and give them some food. But it is unfortunate because they say they have nothing there. They do not know who their neighbours are. They would like to be taken back to where they belong. Some of them are like my relatives. They have lived in a place called Kapsowar and Kuresoi all their lives. The other day, I went there for a funeral. We had the Kalenjins there. They looked like very good people and very friendly! Then, after some time, I heard they had started killing each other. We had lunch. We slaughtered a goat but when the elections came, one neighbour who lived on the left hand side of the house came at night with a machete with all his family and killed those people. We lost three families in one night. It is very unfortunate! Let me say that I am blaming the politicians. I am a politician and I know what a politician is capable of doing. When we started talking, how come the killings stopped? I will not hesitate to say that politicians are the ones to blame! At least, 95 per cent! If they went back there and talked to those people, they would have stopped killing one another and those innocent lives would not have been lost. 256 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is one thing I would like to say about the Speech by the President. Something has been giving us a problem whenever we go to the villages. Those people greet you and the second question they ask you is: " Sasa mheshimiwa, you went to Parliament, where are the jobs?" You find young boys and girls hanging around the shops. Those people have gone to school and passed their exams. But they have no jobs. They tell you: "Now that you are in Parliament, make sure that we get jobs." But, where are these jobs? I remember some time in 1969, when I was a young boy. The late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta introduced a policy in this country which was called the "Tripartite Agreement". For those who were there at that time--- I do not know what it entailed, but it was called a Tripartite Agreement where all employers--- I do not know whether they were forced to employ, at least, 10 per cent, but they did it! There were so many people who were in the streets who got jobs. My cousin got a job and was posted to Kisii in 1969. I am wondering! We have companies in this country that are making billions of shillings. Why are they making all those billions of shillings? It is because our labour is very cheap, the environment is very conducive and we have security. I think we should force them to take a bit of those billions, at least Kshs2 billion--- I do not want to mention any company, but you all know them. They are posting billions of shillings in profits and yet, our youths have no jobs. Why can the Government not ask them or enter into an agreement where a company that, say, is employing 2,000 people, takes, at least, another 20! That even includes the Government. But what you find is that the companies are sacking our people. Is it proper? It is very unfortunate! I am thinking of bringing a Motion to this Parliament where we can force those companies to employ, at least, 10 or 20 per cent or our youths. They will not go under. But our people will get jobs. Let us not talk about the Youth Enterprise Fund! We will give them Youth Development Fund and yet, those people have never been employed. They have no experience of doing business. They will just misuse that money. It will not help them at all. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, on the issue of tourism, we have countries in Europe like Turkey, Spain and France. Tourists who flock a country like France have nothing to see. It is made up of rocks. Yet, the total number of tourists flocking into that country is over 80 million. Why can we not do the same thing in our country? Why can we not do the same for our country here? Should we not expand our airports to accommodate many tourists, so as to make money? I would urge those who are mandated with the job of marketing tourism in this country to pull up their socks. They should be more aggressive, if they want us to make a lot of money. A country like Turkey has nothing to show for her tourism and yet, she attracts more tourists than us. The same applies to Paris and other parts of the world. We have wildlife and wonderful beaches, but we cannot attract more tourists. We can make a lot of money if we properly market our tourism industry. We do not have to borrow money from foreigners with strings attached. My dear countrymen, I would wish we look into that area and see what we can do for our people. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to talk about the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). I would like to commend the gentleman who came up with this idea. We all know what the CDF is doing in our rural areas. It is creating employment. People are developing because of it. People can chose what project they want undertaken. It is doing wonders. If we can manage our CDF properly, we can be assured of being re-elected to Parliament so many times. We can literally live in Parliament if we manage our CDF properly. However, if we do not manage our CDF properly, it will be unfortunate for us because we will not see the entrance of this Parliament again. Otherwise, that idea of the CDF is very important. People in the rural areas are very happy about it. Those Members of Parliament who represent rural areas like me know what wonders CDF is doing for our people there. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, again on agriculture, we have a crop called coffee. Some of us were educated using money made from coffee. We have talked about value adding. We just pick March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 257 our coffee, export it to Europe and then buy it at ten times the price we sold it for. We need to do something about value-addition. We can make much more. At the same time, I would like to encourage the farmers to continue planting coffee. We should introduce something called Guaranteed Minimum Returns (GMR) that will encourage and give hope to our farmers to continue planting coffee. It is actually our livelihood. Some of us would not have gone to school had it not been for proceeds from coffee. It is now sad that the coffee industry is dead. It is as dead as a dodo. We hope the Government will do something about it. The Government should wake up. It should encourage farmers to continue planting coffee. We shall make money and create employment opportunities. If we achieve that, everything will be good for us because things will calm down and people will stop complaining. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I do not wish to talk much about this issue, but I would like to support this Motion on the Presidential Address. May God Bless you.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. My names are Mr. Mohamed Elmi. I represent Wajir East Constituency. First and foremost, I would like to thank my constituents for electing me to this Tenth Parliament. I would also like to thank the many Kenyans who worked for peace at a moment when we thought we were going to lose our country. I do also thank our neighbours, Africa, Europe and the United States of America that came to help us. It is the goodwill of Kenyans that helped us. That is why people have come to our aid when we needed them. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to actually propose that all the Members of Parliament should sign either a card or a pledge to say thank you to His Excellency, Dr. Kofi Annan. This should be done, so that the world knows that we appreciate that we came back from a very bad place. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to send my sympathies to all the people who were affected by the post-election violence. We all know what happened and they were debated here. I will not bore you with what happened. I think some people who were affected are in IDP camps, while others lost all their livelihood. Even some people who were very far away from where the action took place lost their livelihood. Even some children died. As we speak, there is a major drought brewing in the northern part of this country, but because of what happened during the post-election violence, it is has not been given much attention. So, I want to send my sympathies to all Kenyans who were affected during the post-election violence. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, a lot has been said about what happened. I want to point out a few things, which I think have not been mentioned yet. I think there was a collective leadership failure in what happened. The signs were there but they were not read by the leadership from the top to leaders in various institutions in this country. The Kenya National Human Rights Commission was very clear. They produced reports in which they mentioned a number of the things that have afflicted us and led to what happened. But we did not listen to them. They mentioned the ugly ethnicity that was coming about. They also mentioned the impunity. Mr. Maina Kiai repeated the word "impunity" so many times but nobody actually listened to him. I wish we had listened to him, maybe some of the people who died could not have died. There was also the 2005 Constitutional Referendum. I think everybody should have seen and somebody somewhere should have acted. There was also the inequality report that was widely publicised. We are all busy talking about it, but we did not heed its advice. there was also the Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) and the eminent persons who came here. They said we were managing a lot of things well but we have not managed our ethnic differences well. Why do I mention these particular things? I am sure there are many others. I am mentioning these because as the Tenth Parliament, it is upon us to watch these signs so that it never happens again. We should be watching for signs that are going to take our country back and say no. We should listen to the lone voices that most of the time 258 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 people think they are mad. When they turn up, they repeat that certain things are not right. But people think, because it does not affect them, it is okay. I think the word "inequality" has been repeated a lot. But when I hear people use it, they use it as if it is only for certain regions or ethnic groups. I think there is inequality within regions, ethnic groups and every social strata of our society. We must do something serious about it. This is the opportunity to actually face it squarely. When we talk about inequality where I come from, people laugh when they hear other people talk about being marginalised. This is because if you look at the inequality report, you will see that everything is either seven times, ten times national average to the worst. If we talk about the free primary education, who does it serve? We created a "Ministry of Schools" and not a Ministry of Education. 60 per cent of residents in my constutency are pastorlists who are mobile. But according to that Ministry those children who move with their families are not their children. This is because they do not cater for them. The Ministry built schools and then asked the parents to send their children there. They built schools without providing teachers and then people say that we have one country. We cannot have one country until the issue of inequality is addressed. I come from a constituency where the town is probably the only place people use bucket latrines. For how many years have we been Independent? When we have general elections, every President goes there and promises to establish a sewerage facility for the town. I come from a whole province with no road to talk about. There is only a bit of tarmac in Garissa Town in the whole province, but the whole province has none. Of course, in every election year we are promised a road to Mandera and Moyale. So, while I support the Presidential Address, it was short on Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs). In the last Parliament, there were a lot of great things said, but the policy that was developed still lies in cabinets six years later. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is no mention of corruption. I thought that corruption was a big thing in Kenya. It was not given the place it deserves. I feel that, that is an area we should not forget as we make a new constitution. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, as we go forward and take Kenyans to the next height--- I believe this is the moment when we can visit all our institutions. We make a constitution for prosperity and not for individual regions, or one part of this country or another. It is time for all Kenyans to come together, and no part should be forgotten. We should work very hard. I am, therefore, saying the rules of Parliament should be changed, so that we work for more days, pass more Bills, so that we truly earn what we are given. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to say that political parties are going to become very important once we adopt the Parliamentary system. Therefore, we should invest in political parties. We could learn from Somalialand. They have restricted political parties to only three. In this way they "demolished" the ethnic divisions that they had. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we must come up with a programme as we think about reconstruction and everything that will socially re-engineer our society, so that ethnicity becomes a thing of the past. And I mean negative ethnicity. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, finally I want to invite hon. Members to this wonderful one Kenya. This is one Kenya where every hon. Member of this House will visit the northern part of this country and other parts. They will know what each hon. Member is facing in his or her constituency. They will know what other Kenyans go through, so that when we talk about inequality, we will be discussing in a more meaningful way. We will learn about each other's culture, and stop despising them, but instead start appreciating each other. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this is a moment for Kenya's development. Kenya can take off for good. I would like to say that there are no parts of this country where people are not industrious. Where I come from, if it were not for the people's resilience and survival abilities, they would not even be alive. Therefore, we must invest in those places. If only we were given a road to Mandera, March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 259 you would not be saying that ours areas are marginalised. So, the new Kenya I am going to invite you to will have a programme in which we will travel together. In an interval of a minimum of three months somebody should go to another constituency, so that we see the differences in this country in order to build on our strengths and not failures. Thank you Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, my name is Esther Murugi Mathenge, the Member for Nyeri Town. I wish to take this opportunity to, first of all, thank my Nyeri people for according me the honour to lead them for the next five years. In Nyeri, I can assure you, it is not a mean feat for a lady to be elected an MP. Therefore, I wish to thank them very much. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I wish to support the Address given by His Excellency the President last week. But before I do that, I would wish to thank the two leaders, His Excellency the President and hon. Raila Odinga, for signing the peace accord. I can assure you that all Kenyans were waiting. They were waiting to see what would happen. As soon as they signed the Peace Accord, we all had a minute to reflect, ponder and ask ourselves why we did what we did. Was it necessary? Was the loss of lives necessary? Could we have done it in another way? I thank God that we saw sense. Our leaders signed the Peace Accord and yesterday, we passed the Bill. However, I would like us to forgive but not to forget. We have had the same incidents, although not of the same magnitude. One was in 1992, another in 1997, a minor one was in 2002 and the major one of 2007. Why do we always forget? Can we ensure that this time round we do not forget? Otherwise, it will happen again and it will haunt us forever. In the past, after such incidents occurred, we formed commissions. We formed the Akiwumi Commission. However, what did we do with it? We put it under the carpet. We also formed the Ndung'u Commission, and yet we are saying that what caused the problem was the issue of land. What did we do with the Ndung'u Commission Report? We also put it under the carpet. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are now going to form the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission. My dear Members, let us not put it under the carpet. Let us not put it under the carpet because we will have a commission, people will go round the country, listen to those who were injured and collate their views. We will then table the Report here and probably put it under the carpet. If we do that, we will be guilty of any deaths that arise thereafter. I want to say that those who were Members of Parliament when the Akiwumi Commission and the Ndung'u Commission did their work and Reports written, are guilty of the 1,000 deaths. They are guilty of the internal displacement of people and we should hold them to account. They should be held to account and those who were mentioned should be brought to book. I heard someone say that we cannot talk about peace and talk about holding people to account. I think, if we want to talk about peace, we must hold people accountable for their past actions and their present actions so that they do not repeat the same actions in the future. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I do not want to dwell a lot on the issues that have been talked about. However, in his Speech, the President talked about the amendment of the Children Act so that it is easily implemented. He also talked about the beneficiaries of the fund that benefits children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. We were told, previously, that 12,500 families are beneficiaries. We will now have 30,000 beneficiaries. This is just a drop in the ocean. How many victims do we have who are orphaned by HIV/AIDS? I think they are close to 1 million people. Therefore, having 30,000 beneficiaries will not help us. We need to look at the issue more seriously and address it as per the need. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, while amending the Children Act, we also need to address the issues of HIV/AIDS in relation to schools. Some of these children have a very difficult time reaching Standard Eight and attaining the 250 points which form the average mark. We should give 260 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 them special places in special schools like the national schools so that they can have easier time getting to secondary schools. If we leave them as they are, I can assure you that even 50 per cent of them will not get to secondary schools. Even if there is the Free Primary Education (FPE) Programme, there are other things that a child needs in order to perform well in either primary or secondary school. I believe that is why that Fund was established, so that their daily needs can be taken care of. So, let us look at that as we look at this Act and increase the number of beneficiaries. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have also talked about the youth. As we talk today, I think the youth are a time-bomb. We saw just a speck of it in the last two months. Our youths are idle not just because they want to be idle, but we have not given them an environment where they can be used fruitfully. We need to address this issue. Yes, the Youth Enterprise Development Fund was provided. But that Fund is not accessible to most of the youth. We need to look at the Youth Enterprise Development Fund Act and amend it. We are asking a parent to give a title deed to a young man who has never done any business. No parent will agree to that! So, let us look for other ways in which those youths can access the Fund and, maybe, look for the Government or some other organization to be a guarantor. That is because the parents will not forfeit their titles for the youths to get the funds. That is something that defeats the purpose of that Fund. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in my constituency, we have one of the biggest employer, that is Kiganjo Police Training College. I was at the passing-out parade yesterday and, I think, from my constituency, we must have had just five policemen in that parade. I think that if an institution is in a constituency, that constituency should be given a bigger quota than anybody else. That college is in the poorest ward in Nyeri Town. I hope that when I will bring that issue on the Floor, you, hon. Members, are going to support me. That is because we should get not less than 50 policemen every time there is a recruitment. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, some of our communities are not endowed with height, as you can see me here today.

Most of the people in my community do not go beyond 5.5 feet. I think those are some of the historical injustices we are talking about.

So, when you go to the army or the police, you will find that they are a minority because of that historical background.

We want that requirement to be removed from the recruitment exercise. China - where I think most of the people are of my height - has the best army and police! So, I do not think height is a first requirement of making a good soldier. So, I would really want us to work on that issue, so that we can have it removed. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have talked about women and youth. When I go home, the men ask me: "What about us? Why do we also not have a fund that we can benefit from? Some of us have not been employed, but our men have forgotten us". I am putting a plea to you menfolk here that, please, think of your comrades - the men. They feel like the nation and this National Assembly has kind-of forgotten them. Think of a fund for the men. They need it and I think if you do it, the votes, next time, will come without too much efforts. March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 261 Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is also another group that has been forgotten. We have a group of people that is aged over 70 years old. In the past, the African custom was for the young people, especially the young men, to take care of their parents. But, today, you find that, that is a neglected group. If you want to know who is the poorest of the poor in this country, it is those people who are over 70 years old. I would like us to, perhaps, enact a Bill, and I am working on it, so that this nation and the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), in particular, can take care of the aged people. I have seen it work very well in the Scandinavian countries. I think Kenya will also be able to take care of the aged. I know each one of us here has an old grandmother tucked away somewhere. He or she would appreciate the Government for taking care of them. They have contributed to this country's development until the age they have reached. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I do not want to add anything to the Ethnicity Act that is coming up. If we do not handle that issue carefully, it is going to be worse than it has been. Kenya is a diversity of tribes. Let us not kill our culture. Let us not kill that diversity by wanting to be one. We cannot be one because by virtue of where you were born, you are, first and foremost, that where you were born. During my campaigns, I told my people that I did not send a letter to God to be born a woman. I was born a woman and I am happy to be a woman. We are born of the communities where we belong and we did not ask to be born there. So, let us not kill our cultures and traditions. Let us just learn to co-exist with each. On a light note, I would like ladies to be allowed to carry their handbags to the House before the Standing Orders are revised to provide for this.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to also voice my ideas on the Motion that is before us. I want to take this earliest opportunity to thank the Almighty God for enabling me to be alive currently and also to be part of this august House. I know many would have wished to be part of this august House, but they are not. I am very glad to God for allowing me to this end. I have no doubt in my mind that this Tenth Parliament is going to go down in history as one of the greatest Parliaments that either put Kenya back on track or progress and civilisation, if we legislate good laws. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I can also not forget to thank the great sons and daughters of Funyula for electing me as their Member of Parliament despite the gigantic efforts that were made to stifle and trample democracy. They stood steadfast and elected me. Funyula, just to remind you, is one of the poorest constituencies in the Republic of Kenya. We have a poverty index of over 70 per cent. Over 80 per cent of our people have no access to water. Our roads are impassable whether there are rains or no rains. There are no roads that you can really call roads. In Funyula, education is actually in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Out of the ten secondary schools in Funyula, we hardly send even ten students to our national universities, yet this is an area that was represented by one individual for the last 25 years. That is why I am very happy to be part of this House, that it is going to be for the good of the society, whatever laws we are going to pass here. In supporting the Motion, I want to say that this country has also learnt the importance of what great leadership is all about. I want to congratulate His Excellency the President, Mwai Kibaki, and the Prime Minister designate, hon. Raila Odinga, for signing the National Accord that has given this country some peace and tranquillity that will enable us to move to the next stage. I know that in so doing, they were not compromised. Some people thought that this was a compromise of principles or a transgression of our Constitution. But we all know that in all compromise, each side has to give in on extreme demands, so that every side gets something and we are able to move on. In so doing, it is for our mutual benefit, as Kenyans from both sides. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have no doubt that the Accord will lead to restoration and 262 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 harmony in our country. I believe from the bottom of my heart that the Bills that we passed yesterday are a dove of peace. If we allow them and embrace the spirit of peace, this country is going to start the healing process. I also would like to mention that sometimes we have talked about individuals and power and the mistakes that we made. I want to remind this Parliament that any individual who is not in harmony or resonating with what the country wants, is totally misplaced. Currently, Kenyans have seen the importance of working together, respecting one another and respecting our diverse cultures, so that we can move together as a nation. I want to support the Presidential Speech---

Hon. Members, it is now time for the interruption of business. The House is, therefore, adjourned until this afternoon at 2.30 p.m. The House rose at 12.30 p.m.