MPs clash on referendum merger bid

MPs yesterday clashed over the multiple initiatives to amend the Constitution.

This differences came just a day after the electoral agency rejected signatures collected for the Opposition’s Okoa Kenya campaign.

The meeting in Nairobi’s County Hall was supposed to be a cordial public hearing to determine how all the initiatives will be merged and a single Bill drafted to amend the Constitution.

But Christopher Omulele (Luanda) and Sakwa Bunyasi (Nambale) were not amused that their chairman in the National Assembly’s Constitution Implementation Oversight Committee Njoroge Baiya (Githunguri) had publicly spoken against Okoa Kenya yet was now heading talks on the referendum merger.

Omulele said he saw Baiya together with Majority Leader Aden Duale and the National Alliance’s chairman Johnson Sakaja claiming that some of the signatures submitted to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission were fake, and therefore his impartiality was already compromised.

He asked Baiya to recuse himself from the seat, while Bunyasi argued that the talk of a merger of the initiatives appeared to be a ploy to delay or even derail the amendment of the controversial parts of the country’s five-year-old Constitution.

But Baiya vowed to stay put, and argued that the committee had a duty to guide the amendment process in “a coherent and orderly manner”.

The fireworks erupted when Moses Kuria (Gatundu South) said that the special seats for women had to be scrapped. That proposal did not impress Grace Kiptui (Baringo), who was elected to that seat reserved for women in the counties.

“I don’t know why you think you can manage on your own as men. When Obama was here, he told you that you cannot manage on your own, that you should involve women. You also know the issues of gender disparity in this country. I want you to talk like a person who lives here. The economy needs all of us!” Ms Kiptui said.

But Kuria, whose ‘Punguza Mzigo’ seeks to do away with all nominated seats, the Senate, and to cut the counties from 47 to 16, insisted that Kenya’s economy cannot support seats just for the sake of affirmative action.

The Council of Governors and the Boresha Maisha initiative (presented by a group of MPs) and senators have also been invited to give their views.

“We need an orderly process that we can use to consolidate all these proposals,” said Ababu Namwamba (Budalang’i).