Nasa leaders come out guns blazing after Wetang’ula blocked from Senate leadership

The Jubilee Party has opened a fresh onslaught on the National Super Alliance by blocking Moses Wetang’ula from taking up the Senate Minority Leader post.

Last week, Senate Speaker Kenneth Lusaka rejected Mr Wetang’ula’s nomination as the House Minority Leader and issued an ultimatum to Nasa to submit a list of its nominees to various committees by November 20.

He rejected two letters from the coalition showing Mr Wetang’ula as the Leader of Minority in the Senate on grounds that his nomination was done unprocedurally as it was written by the Bungoma senator himself, something Nasa vehemently denies.

SCHEME

Jubilee also argued that Ford Kenya (Ford-K), Mr Wetang’ula’s political outfit, does not qualify to be a parliamentary party.

The law governing political outfits, however, states that a party qualifies to be a parliamentary one if it has an elected member either in the Senate or the National Assembly.

Ford-K has only one seat in the Senate, which is occupied by Mr Wetang’ula, and has 10 members in the National Assembly.

Mr Wetang’ula laughed off the move to block him from assuming the post, telling the Sunday Nation that the scheme was “hatched a long time ago” and blamed Mr Lusaka for the mess.

“We in Nasa already knew what they were planning, even before it came out. It is a matter that Mr Lusaka has been discussing in bars,” said Mr Wetang’ula.

He added: “The role of a Speaker in Parliament is not to fix people. He does not know the glue that has put Nasa leaders together.”

Mr Wetang’ula said the Constitution and the law recognise Nasa as a coalition in Parliament.

“We are in Parliament as a package called Nasa. The instruments recognising Nasa are with the Registrar of Political Parties and our Nasa secretariat.”

COALITION

He said these are desperate attempts by a “Jubilee-sponsored Speaker” to derail Nasa because he knows that the coalition stands for the good of the people.

“The Speaker cannot micromanage Nasa. We operate within the structures of Nasa that allow us to work together. The schemes by these doomsday conspirators will not succeed. They will not manage us. We are ahead of the game and they are always playing catch-up,” said Mr Wetang’ula.

Nasa chief executive officer Norman Magaya dismissed Mr Lusaka’s arguments as “hogwash” and a waste of time, saying the coalition has bigger wars to fight than these small issues.

“The fact remains that Mr Wetang’ula and Mr John Mbadi (Suba South MP) are Nasa’s choices for Minority Leaders in the Senate and National Assembly respectively,” he said on Friday.

Mr Mbadi served for two weeks only before his privileges were withdrawn after the National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi quashed his nomination, citing failure by the nominating entity to follow procedure. Mr Muturi was informed of Mr Mbadi’s nomination through a letter from Mr Magaya.

MISCHIEF

House rules dictate that the Minority Whip communicates to the Speaker on its party leadership list. The list must be accompanied by minutes of the meeting that made the decision.

“I have communicated to the two Speakers, complete with a forwarding letter, minutes of the parliamentary group that approved the same. I, therefore, read mischief in the refusal by the parliamentary leadership to accept the decision or insinuation that Mr Wetang’ula authored the letter himself,” said Mr Magaya.

He added that the debate on the minority leadership is nothing compared to the huge task Nasa is facing in its bid to wrestle power from Jubilee through its National Resistance Movement.

Makueni Senator Mutula Kilonzo Jr weighed in, saying: “Mr Wetang’ula remains our Leader of Minority regardless of the Speaker’s ruling. The Speaker should not get involved in the internal affairs of parties or coalitions, including Nasa. That is for the Nasa leadership, including Wetang’ula, to deal with,” said Mr Kilonzo Jr.

Taking a leaf out of the experience of the last Parliament, Mr Kilonzo Jr said when there was an issue in the Senate regarding the leadership of the Public Accounts and Investments committees, Cord at the time asked the Speaker to keep off as it was a coalition issue, “and he agreed”.

COALITION

According to a source within Jubilee, its scheme involves cultivating mistrust among the four Nasa constituent parties, hoping this will create fissures the ruling political outfit will exploit to its advantage and split the opposition coalition.

According to the plan, the Jubilee Party is taking stock of the strengths and weaknesses of each party in the coalition.

Where necessary, such information will be exploited to its advantage when the situation demands. Jubilee sees the weaknesses in Ford-K as a godsend and has capitalised on them to mock the party.

An example of this situation was at play on Wednesday, when the National Assembly debated the adoption of a select committee to vet applicants to the East African Legislative Assembly.

When he took to the floor, Majority Leader Aden Duale declared that Ford-K is not a parliamentary party and should, therefore, not be allowed to benefit from the three seats set aside for the Opposition.