Meru Governor Kiraitu Murungi has lauded the recently released BBI report as a fairly good document but with devils in the details.
“By and large, the report is good and we support it.. but we say the devil is always in the details. So we have to read the report very keenly to see if there are any games in it,” Kiraitu said.
The man whose county hosted a BBI rally for the larger Mt Kenya said the CoG’s main interest was increase of allocation to the counties.
“We are looking for a solution in the BBI… I’ve seen at least it will give double the allocation, which will allow us to do a lot of grassroot projects in Meru,” he said.
Kiraitu said he is supporting the BBI report because it proposes an increase in allocation to counties from the current 15% to 35%.
“Chapter 11 should be amended by increasing the resources to the counties from the current 15% to at least 35% of the last audited accounts and ensuring that the focus is on service delivery in the settled and serviced areas, including for people living near the furthest boundaries of each county,” read part of the report.
But the Meru Governor is trashing BBI’s idea that governors and their deputies be of the opposite gender.
BBI aims to scrap the 47 woman representative positions and replace them with an equal number in the Senate as a win-win scenario.
The taskforce led by Garissa Senator Yusuf Haji proposes the country elects 94 senators, with each county electing one man and one woman.
If adopted, the report will delete Article 98 1 (a), which set the number of senators to 47 and other additional 16 members nominated by political parties.
The report will not only expand the executive but the parliament too in a naive move to cure gender imbalance.
The devil that Kiraitu sees in the details of the document includes the proposal to have a 360-member House. The usual 290 will be elected by the people in the constituencies and another 70 will be filled by political parties.
The additional 70 seats will be allocated on the strength of actual votes cast per county and will be distributed among youths, people with disabilities and women. The women have a chance of up to 35 out of the 70 additional seats.
Kiraitu further criticised the reports fantasy to separate and politics. He said the two are inseparable.
“Luos will always be there… Merus… so whether BBI says they are there or not, they will always be there,” he said.
