Senate Majority Leader, Kipchumba Murkomen, has accused Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya and the entire Council of Governors (CoG) for being a let-down to the Division of Revenue Bill, 2019.
Speaking to K24‘s Anne Kiguta, the vocal Elgeyo Marakwet Senator admitted that the leadership of the counties was the “weakest he had ever seen” since the inception of devolution in 2013.
In the hotly contested negotiations, President Kenyatta put his foot down in several occasions, saying the government was not going to yield to the governor’s demands of Ksh335 Billion allocation to counties.
“On the debate of Division of Revenue, the Council of Governors was a total let-down, it has the weakest leadership I’ve ever seen,” lamented Murkomen.
The National Assembly had proposed an allocation of Ksh310 billion before revising the figure to Ksh316.5 following protracted negotiations.
Thursday, the Senate threw in the towel after the battle began to eat into the first quarter of 2019/2020 financial year.
“As you are aware that the Division of Revenue forms the basis upon which the two levels of government prepare legal instruments for public expenditure. The National Assembly proceeded to publish, consider and pass an Appropriation Act setting up expenditure for National Government. Therefore, as the counties are headed to a halt sooner rather than later, the national government has continued to operate unobstructed,” Senate minority leader James Orengo stated on Thursday.
On his part, Senator Murkomen stated, “The Senate following a meeting that was held today (Thursday last week) has made a painful but a patriotic decision to advise our negotiators in the ongoing mediation process to agree to the allocation of the 316.5 billion shillings as the equitable share of the nationally raised revenue to be allocated to the counties.
“This has been a very difficult decision for the senate, but we have been faced with a situation where we had to rise to the calling and put overall national interest above short term partisan considerations.”