Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga called on lawmakers to rise to the occasion and offer leadership by entrenching institutional reforms necessary to break negative ethnicity that threatens national fabrics.
Odinga told the politicians to fast track the enactment of legislation needed to reconcile the nation and create cohesion among hitherto hostile communities, previously involved in ethnic-related skirmishes due to historical indifference.
"The grand coalition government was a product of a crisis and members of the current parliament must show leadership from the front by receding from their ethnic cocoons and propagate nationalistic interests, no matter how unpopular they are," he said.
Addressing a global seminar in Nairobi, Odinga called on political leaders not to retreat to their ethnic cocoons but deal with crucial and crosscutting issues of national and even international interests.
The prime minister also cited the turning of the country into a one-party State by law by the Parliament in 1980s and the ensuing struggles that led to the restoration of multiparty democracy in the country.
"Let's deal with these problems as Kenyans and disagree with issues as Kenyans and ensure that the culture of lawlessness and impunity does not thrive because such tendencies are a recipe for disaster," he urged fellow parliamentarians.
The prime minister said the leaders had the mandate to institute radical reforms during their current term in office and bring the desired changes in governance for the good of the majority Kenyans rather than serving the interest of' sectarian 'quarters.
Odinga told off a section of leaders to whom he riled for purporting to champion for the welfare of the communities at the peril of national unity to stop forthwith from playing divisive politics and embrace collective approach to issues of national importance.
He urged members of the house to seize and capitalize on the unique opportunity the grand coalition arrangement presented in the political arena to carry the legal and constitutional reforms that Kenyans had yearned for.
The leader told the opening session of a seminar on the role of parliament in reconciliation and institutional reforms that the failure by past regimes to act on recommendations from various commissions had compounded the problems afflicting the current administration.
Speaker of the National Assembly Kenneth Marende who presided over the proceedings on the other hand regretted that the house had failed to decisively act on graft cases, saying the country had lost more than 200 billion shillings (2.55 billion U.S. dollars) to the vice over the last decade.
The three-day seminar held at a Nairobi hotel attracted participants from across the political divide was organized by the Kenya National Assembly and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, aiming to develop a road map towards implementation of the desired reforms.
Source: Xinhua
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article