MCAs demand cash during stormy BBI meeting

 

There was drama on Saturday in a meeting between Western leaders and MCAs who had convened to discuss the  Constitutional (Amendment)Bill, 2020 currently before 47 county assemblies.

The meeting held at Golf hotel in Kakamega was meant to rally the ward reps to support the Constitutional review through the BBI.

However, rowdy MCAs kept chanting the word money as some said they had been promised out of pocket cash but they never received the money. 

“You have been flying in choppers holding BBI meetings where you never gave MCAs a chance to speak now you have come back to us,” they said.

Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya also found himself in trouble with the journalists after he attempted to deny them a chance to cover speeches by ANC leader Musalia Mudavadi and his Ford Kenya counterpart Moses Wetang'ula.

Oparanya ordered his county enforcement officers to eject the media from the function before inviting the two to speak in what was interpreted as a scheme to give the two a media blackout at the function.

They declined to address the MCAs and demanded the media back terming what they wanted to talk about as national. 

It took the intervention of Devolution CS Eugene Wamalwa to plead with Oparanya to let the media stay.

But the journalists declined to go back and demanded that Oparanya first apologies to them on the microphone the same way he ordered their ejection. He later apologized.

Cotu boss Francis Atwoli and governors, Sospeter Ojaamong (Busia), Wycliffe Wangamati (Bungoma), Wilber Ottichilo (Vihiga) and ODM Secretary General Edwin Sifuna rallied the 270 MCAs drawn from Kakamega, Busia, Bungoma and Vihiga counties to approve the BBI bill. 

“The issue now is not BBI but the referendum. We should be talking to the public about the Constitutional Amendment Bill and the consequential Bills. The details are what Kenyans want to know,” Mudavadi said. 

Atwoli told the MCAs to pass the Bill this week saying it will address the winner takes it all problem in the country leadership.     

Wetang'ula said counties should allow care money in their supplementary budgets to carter for MCAs welfare.

He said Western fully supports the BBI and the processes leading to change of the constitution.

“Western should have been allocated more constituencies based on demographic data but we hope this will be addressed moving forward,” he said.

COURTESY OF THE STAR.