Duty comes first, Ababu tells critics

What you need to know:

  • Lawmaker says those accusing him of being a mole are being ‘manifestly cheap’
  • Mr Namwamba has come under accusations that he is working with the Jubilee administration to speed up the approval of the most recent audited financial reports to see more cash go to the counties.

Budalang’i MP Ababu Namwamba has defended himself against accusations from his colleagues in Cord that he is being used by the government to scuttle the Okoa Kenya referendum campaign.

Mr Namwamba, who is also the chairman of the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC), has come under accusations that he is working with the Jubilee administration to speed up the approval of the most recent audited financial reports to see more cash go to the counties. Giving more money to counties will pull the carpet from under Cord’s feet because increased funding is one of the rallying points for the referendum.

“Such allegations are manifestly cheap and incredibly ludicrous. They really are not worth a response. I choose to say something merely because I believe Kenyans deserve better than this political nonsense,” he told the Sunday Nation.

Some Cord members argue that Mr Namwamba and the government have hatched a plan to hasten approvals of audited financial reports to deflate the referendum balloon of both Cord and the Council of Governors, initiatives that are largely hinged on the need to allocate more funds to counties.

“It is a fact, is it not, that my committee inherited a whopping five-year backlog of pending audit reports? By March 2014, the last approved audited accounts were for the year 2007/08. We did not create that backlog. It is a fact, is it not, that the constitution sets a strict inelastic nine-month cycle for clearing annual audits – three months for accounting officers to prepare books?

“This cycle must conclude by March of every succeeding year, to facilitate division of revenue between national and county governments, which is to be calculated on the basis of the most current approved accounts those of the immediate preceding year,” he said.

Mr Namwamba said that together with other PAC members, they undertook to work on the financial records long before Cord launched Okoa Kenya.

ELABORATE PLOT

“When we set off on this challenge a year ago, there was no referendum talk. To therefore introduce the silly political argument that our work is influenced by the referendums is utter nonsense. .. an insult to Parliament’s busiest and most hard working committee,” he said.

But Ugunja MP Opiyo Wandayi disagrees.

“I have said before, and I still maintain, that Cord needs to urgently review the composition of its membership in the crucial Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly. My instincts tell me that something is not right somewhere. What we presently have is a PAC that is malleable and which panders to the Executive,” he said.

According to Mr Wandayi, the government has found Mr Namwamba an ideal pick to aid its war on Okoa Kenya.

“The Jubilee plot is working perfectly; render the PAC toothless by compromising its membership and blame its non-performance on Cord because it nominally leads it. The current haste by PAC to process the audited accounts must be seen in the above light. It is doing the Jubilee Government’s bidding in order to slow down the clamour for a referendum,” he argues.

Suna East MP Junet Mohammed argues the “rushing” of the process by Mr Namwamba’s team is meant to cover individuals in government who might have misused public funds.

“The audit should not be rushed just for the purpose of giving more money to counties. There are many issues which must be interrogated in the books of accounts and any hurry will only shield people who have misused public funds. In the long run, the rush will only compromise the work of the committee,” he said.

To Mr Namwamba, his Cord colleagues have mastered the art of double-speak. He argues that before the committee embarked on approval of audited accounts, he was accused of being part of a scheme by the government to deny counties cash yet now that he is doing it, the story has changed.