Hon. Speaker, I thank you for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this Address by the President. First of all, I want to thank the great people of Molo Constituency for the confidence they showed me by electing me for the second time as a Member of Parliament. I will note that since the start of the multiparty democracy, Molo has never re-elected anyone.
(Applause)
I am here as the first person for the last 30 years to be re-elected in that great constituency. This shows the confidence that the people of Molo had in me and in the services that I offered them without discriminating against the various communities that are in my constituency. Molo is a cosmopolitan constituency.
I note that in the Address by His Excellency the President, he saluted the great women that have been elected in single constituencies, and have been re-elected in this 13th Parliament. In the great county that I come from, Nakuru County and City, we were popularly known as the ‘Nakuru Girls,’ because we produced the highest number of women Members of Parliament in our respective constituencies. We also elected a woman Governor and a woman Senator. I say this as a proud father of a daughter, because my daughter can look forward to dreaming to be any person or be in any leadership position she would like to hold in this great Republic.
Nakuru is very unique. At the start of our county, we elected our senior most, Hon. Jayne Kihara; and at the tail end of our county in Nakuru, we elected the youngest, who is yours truly speaking this morning. But of course, we are happy to have our newest Members, Hon. Mutai from Kuresoi North and of course the mamba that swallowed the jogoo in Rongai Constituency.
Hon. Speaker, I would like to note the great number of young leaders or young people that have been elected in this 13th Parliament. This Parliament has highest record of young Members who have been elected as MPs. I am very happy that the young people that I was elected with in the 12th Parliament have been re-elected. I want to honour just a few, like the Hon. John Paul Mwirigi, who was the youngest in the 12th Parliament; my colleagues from Kenyatta University, Hon. Ndindi Nyoro, Hon. Karemba and Hon. Pato all got re-elected. This means that we have with us a record of people that are going to become career politicians. I have often said that if you wanted to get a lawyer who has 30 years of experience, you will get plenty of them. If you look for medical doctors with 30 years of experience, you will get plenty of them but if you look for politicians or MPs with 30 years of experience, there are very few. The ones that are there now are, for example, yours truly, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Hon. Moses Wetangula, and His Excellency the President of the Republic of Kenya, Dr. William Samoei Ruto. This, therefore, means that this breed of young people to whom we are giving experience in politics among us will be our sixth, seventh and eighth presidents of the Republic of Kenya.
His Excellency the President noted that the last election was issue-based. When I was campaigning for the Kenya Kwanza Alliance in Molo Constituency, I did not have difficulties explaining how President Ruto is a Kalenjin or not. Our mantra as UDA of “Pesa Mfukoni” would drive everybody to that agenda. This is because Kenyans are tired of politics of ethnic mobilisation, and all they have learnt is that when maize flour is sold expensively, the price is the same whether you are a Kikuyu, Luo or Kisii. Equally, when facing unemployment in the country, it affects all people irrespective of the communities they come from. So, I am very happy with the progress we have made. I hope that we will all remain committed and that going forward, our politics will never again be based on our ethnic communities.
Hon. Speaker, His Excellency the President noted the concern that your predecessor, Hon. Justin Muturi, raised several times about the role of Parliament in overseeing the Executive. Many are the times we issued invitations to Cabinet Secretaries (CSs) to come and answer audit queries, or Questions from Hon. Members, but even when they came to address us on the Floor, the answers were unsatisfactory. They used to give excuse after excuse on how they would not be available to answer MPs. This really undermined the role of Parliament in overseeing the Executive. Therefore, I am very happy to note that this Parliament will start reviewing our Standing Orders to allow these CSs to come and answer questions on the Floor of the House.
I am particularly happy that several of our colleagues have been appointed to the Executive: Hon. Aden Duale, Hon. Alice Wahome and Hon. Aisha Jumwa, as well as all the other politicians that will now be serving the Executive. As I congratulate them, I hope that they will not forget where they came from. I hope they do not forget the troubles they had in reaching CSs for them to answer Questions or lobby for projects in their constituencies. We, therefore, hope that when we go to knock on the doors of these people who will be in the Executive, they will listen to us as they would have loved to be listened to when they served as MPs.
Hon. Speaker, the President promised us that fertilisers will be accessible to wananchi. True to his word, these fertilizers are available in stores across the country. This was a great departure from the economics of subsidising consumption at the expense of subsidising production. What we saw in the previous Government is that subsidising consumption led to expenditures that could not be accounted for, and we did not succeed even when we tried to lower those prices. This is because research has shown that if you really want to subsidise the cost of a product, the easiest and most rational way is to subsidise its production rather than its consumption.
I note that the President, in his Address, stated that we are overtaxing consumption at the expense of taxing wealth. For a very long time, we have had the assumption that if you increase the tax rates, you will then collect more revenue. However, scientific research such as what we call in economics the Laffer Curve has shown that you will increase the tax rate up to a particular point, where a further increase in that tax rate will lead to collection of less taxes. I am, therefore, hoping that as the 13th Parliament looks forward to debating the Finance Bill, we will not have the proverbial increase of tax rates hoping that we will collect more revenue. I hope that we will have a tax system that is sensitive to the hard-economic times that we are in, noting that increasing tax rates will not necessarily lead to an increase in tax collection.
The President in his Address talked about housing as one of his key agendas. In addition to providing thousands of jobs for our young people, this will also lead to a decent way of living for our people. In Molo Constituency, which is quite rural, we have a big slum called Kasarani. We have families living together in a single room. You have a father, mother and adult children sharing the same tiny wooden room. I am, therefore, hoping that when this project kicks off, Molo will be one of the first beneficiaries and we will provide decent housing for our people.
On the issue of savings, yesterday, I received a call from one of my constituents asking me to move a Bill in Parliament to increase the age of retirement from 60 to 65. This is because their savings in the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) are not enough to cater for their retirement. Although this will be a pinch to us in the long run, we need to be a saving country and save enough so that we do not overburden our children to support our livelihoods when we get old.
With that, I thank you, Hon. Speaker.
