Budget crisis looms as ODM MPs issue threat

Monday, 30 May 2011 00:03 BY MATHEWS NDANYI AND NZAU MUSAU

CONTROVERSY: Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta arrives to read the budget last June.

Concerns the budget might not be read on June 8 as announced started to sink in yesterday as ODM MPs threatened to block it and an NGO finalized plans to move to court over the same.
MPs Ababu Namwamba, Rachel Shebesh and John Mbadi said they will mobilize colleagues to block the presentation of the budget for contravening Article 221 of the Constitution which demands estimates tabled two months before the reading date.
And in Nairobi, International Centre for Policy and Conflict (ICPC) through its director Ndung’u Wainaina announced that its court papers are ready and their intention is to force Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta to comply with the constitution. “We did not pass a new constitution as a cosmetic exercise. If Uhuru breaches the law then let him be ready to face the full wrath of those of us who respect the new laws,” said Namwamba in Kitale.
Together with Shebesh and Mbadi, Namwamba talked of dark forces frustrating the smooth implementation of the constitution. The Budalangi MP was recently controversially ejected from the leadership of committee on administration of justice and legal affairs.
Besides postponement of the budget, which would inevitably create an unprecedented crisis, the other option is political compromise, which is what Treasury appears to have agreed with the budget committee headed by Elias Mbau.
But yesterday, Wainaina who described his organization’s resolve to move to court as unstoppable, said the constitution did not envisage any political compromise in such a straightforward matter. This is the same view held by the Commission for Implementation of the Constitution.
He said Uhuru had failed the country and it was now up to President Kibaki who appointed him to sack him. “The president swore to defend and protect the constitution, so if he does not sack him, he will turn himself in as the one violating the constitution by retaining him.”
But according to Ndaragwa MP Jeremiah Kioni, the issue is not about the failure of the minister. He said the provisions on budget and finance in the constitution were forced on them in Naivasha last year during the negotiations. “There was a lot of activism in Naivasha and we tried to raise those issues in vain. Uhuru tried to project these issues, but people thought he was shielding his ministry. A lot of us were accused of being anti-reforms when we tried to question the practicalities of some of these issues,” Kioni said.
Asked what it actual terms prevented Uhuru from tabling the estimates two months prior to the reading, Kioni said that would be an answer he would love to get from the minister. Elsewhere, assistant ministers Katoo Metito and Lewis Nguyai defended Uhuru saying he acted in good faith.