Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-01-16-Speech-3-245"
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"en.20080116.12.3-245"2
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"Mr President, clearly we need to identify the fact that Kenya is a country where most people are actually subsisting on a couple of dollars a day.
There is massive discontent and deprivation; a whole army of discontented people, as we have seen, has been engendered by the situation there, because what they realise is that the gap between the haves and the have-nots in Kenya has widened – and that in the context of that 6% growth in GDP which others have mentioned.
Kenya is a low-income, low-resource economy. It is also a country which, tragically, is mired in patronage and in corruption. And what we see is that, as we speak here today, people are storing up food, and people are out on the streets again in Nairobi and in other parts of Kenya.
Therefore I would add my voice to those that have said that the EU must suspend budget support to Kenya until a political resolution to the present crisis has been found. Of course, it is unacceptable that that EUR 40.6 million was sent the day after the election criticisms were made.
I am very encouraged that Commissioner Michel intimated in our committee on Monday that budget support would be reviewed immediately. I would like to hear some more detail of that. Instead of channelling money through line ministries in Kenya, we must look at ways of doing it through project support, which also ensures that the poor of Kenya are not damaged by such an action.
In my view we need to be much clearer about the need to place aid conditionality on good governance, as is clearly stated under the Cotonou Partnership Agreements, and we have not done that. We have, I am afraid, turned a blind eye to many of the serious accusations about corruption in that country.
Finally, the perpetrators of those irregular election results that the observers have reported to us must be held to account and must not be allowed to get away with it.
I also say that the European Union must play its part in monitoring the mediation process. We have been at the vanguard of asking for these considerations to be made, and I would like the Council and the European Union to be stronger and more consistent in its approach, and make sure that Kofi Annan is given all the support he needs from Europe, and that a new Election Commission can be put in place as soon as possible."@en1
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