Chaos at the City Hall

NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 15 - Nairobi councillors on Sunday demonstrated their disharmony once again with a crucial meeting ending in disarray after ODM and PNU councilors failed to agree on the election of key committee leaders.

Trouble arose after Mayor Geoffrey Majiwa appeared to push for an election by acclamation which was being fronted by ODM leaders, as opposed to secret ballot as championed by PNU.

Acrimony soon followed as ODM councillors stormed out of City Hall, claiming to have concluded the election.

But PNU's nominated councillor Mutunga Mutungi addressed a news conference where he said that no election had taken place and accused the Mayor of flouting the Local Government Act.

“And now we are appealing to the Prime Minister and the Minister for local government to prevail upon the ODM group because what they demonstrated here is the height of impunity which we are trying to avoid in this council,” Councillor Mutungi said.

“We wanted to vote each member democratically because members had decided on the chairmen of various committees within their own arrangements,” he added.

The ODM civic leaders had also wanted to chair all the 16 committees, while PNU was demanding an equal sharing of the seats.

“This is because they want to guard whatever dirty deals they have been doing in the council,” the nominated councilor claimed.

“It’s a shame to the ODM fraternity in the council because they have ashamed their party instead of behaving in decorum. We are in a healing mode of the country and we want to forget political parties especially when we come to local authorities where we are supposed to serve people without any party affiliations,” he stated.

He also accused the Town Clerk (Phillip Kisia) of failure to guide the council in the elections as required by the law and appealed to the local government minister Musalia Mudavadi to direct Mr Kisia to hold the elections.

He said they would march to the Minister’s office on Monday morning if no action was taken by then.