Murathe, Raila to hold county funds row talks

 President Uhuru Kenyatta has dispatched Jubilee Vice chairman David Murathe to Watamu, Kilifi on Monday for a meeting with ODM leader Raila Odinga to help unlock the impasse on revenue sharing formula in the Senate.

Sources said the President is deeply concerned that the standoff formented by key Odinga allies such as Senate Minority leader James Orengo opposing the proposed formula threatens the existence of the handshake and its baby, Building Bridges Initiative (BBI).

Senate Majority Whip Irungu Kang’ata fired a warning to the ODM side saying they risk undoing what both the president and Mr Odinga had invested in for the last two years.

“On Tuesday, we shall bite the bullet and move the Motion. If we lose, the BBI will most likely collapse. We shall not negotiate any further because counties are suffering. We support the BBI because in our view it stands for one-man, one shilling. There would be no need supporting the BBI thereafter,” he said.

In the meeting, we gathered, Mr Murathe is expected to explain to the former Prime Minister the Jubilee perspective and address the fears by the ODM side. And what is at stake in case the vote collapses will also feature in the talks.

SAVE FACE

It also emerged that Jubilee party had scheduled a Parliamentary Group meeting on Tuesday morning, before the vote, to try and save face. As of last evening, Mr Kang’ata was reaching out to senators allied to the Deputy President William Ruto (Tangatanga) to boost his numbers with the President said to directly reach out to selected senators.

Equally, the Tangatanga fraternity was Saturday evening hard at work, pushing for the failure of the Bill to prove to the President that Mr Odinga cannot be trusted.

While Mr Orengo adopted a cautious approach, declining to comment on the matter, sources from within ODM intimated that they would not succumb to blackmail in the name of saving the ‘handshake’ unless Mr Odinga intervenes.

The Sunday Nation also learnt that ODM was consulting within its ranks to find the best way out of the deadlock that threatens to cripple operations in counties.

An aide said that Mr Odinga’s dilemma is finding a way to support the formula in solidarity with the President and still convince ODM counties that shall have lost out that he means well.

But Senate Minority Whip Mutula Kilonzo Jr said the House was not going to move an inch.

COUNTIES SUFFER

“You cannot tell counties to suffer now in the hope of a better future. The least we can go for is status quo and by the way, it is not up to Kang’ata to tell us whether the BBI will collapse or not,” he said.

“BBI proposes that counties will get 35 per cent of national revenue and Raila knows this. His troops have no reason to oppose the formula since once the BBI report is implemented, all counties will gain,” Mr Kang’ata said.

But governors like Laikipia’s Ndiritu Muriithi, who is supporting the new formula has accused some Senators of hypocrisy as they have had the formula since 2019.

“Why the furious debate now and not then? In truth, most counties are better off with the new formula and the current data (from 2019 census) on both population and poverty index. In addition, this formula attempts to align with actual cost of providing services,” he said.

Mr Muriithi says counties that lost allocations did so because previous allocations were based on the inflated population figures from.

EQUALISATION FUND

2009. “However, we can use the equalisation fund to mitigate the "loss",” said the Laikipia Governor.

The debate on the controversial third formula of sharing revenue among counties has morphed into a complex political game that could hurt the delivery of essential services to the counties.

While President Kenyatta allies in Jubilee party blame ODM Raila Odinga of frustrating the handshake after he failed to whip his lawmakers into supporting the new formula, another column of lawmakers sees the impasse as an ideological rift that can only be solved through an honest conversation on how national resources should be shared in an equitable manner.

“Dispersal of both economic and political power is a deep concept that cannot be articulated using superficial slogans like one man, one shilling one vote, or one shilling one kilometre,” Tharaka Nithi Senator Kithure Kindiki said, while dismissing claims that the success or failure of the formula is down to politics of alignments.

“The argument that some regions are useless, bushes, deserts or unproductive is misleading, false and a trivial philosophy.”

On Thursday, the government was forced to cause the premature adjournment of the special sitting of the Senate that had been convened to debate the formula, forcing the Senators to threaten to impeach Speaker Kenneth Lusaka.

SHOOT DOWN FORMULA

The decision to adjourn was taken after it emerged that the so-called losing counties, although in the minority, had gained a significant solidarity support and were ready to shoot down the formula.

On one hand, there are counties, mainly occupied by sedentary communities, hugely populated and which stand to gain immensely should the formula be adopted.

On the opposite end are 19 counties, mainly from arid and semi-arid zone, even though they enjoy vast kilometres, they are sparsely and stand to lose a great deal should the formula be adopted.

Prof Kindiki is leading a group of 30 Senators has organised themselves and they are vowing to reject the formula on the account that it will hurt the devolution project, if adopted, and obliterate the little gains since devolution started being implemented in 2013.

The group is led by Tharaka Nithi senator Kithure Kindiki, who is providing the ideological anchorage, and Mandera senator Mahamud Mohamed who is the political face of it.

While it consists of 19 counties that stand to lose money should the formula be adopted, it has at least six other counties, who though gaining, have decided to stand in solidarity out of concern that the formula does not promote equity.

FIGHT

“This is a battle we are willing to fight in and out of Parliament,” Prof Kindiki said yesterday, while confirming the existence of the group.

“If we fail to win it in Parliament, then we shall take it to the Judiciary and even court of public opinion.”

In the opinion of the group, the debate surrounding the formula has nothing to do with the politics of the day. But rather it is symptomatic of the historical and ideological debate that has defined the modern Kenyan state since the colonial times, where dispersal of economic and political power was skewed in favour of certain regions.

“This formula is much broader in context than the usual politics. What we have is the politics of 1960s which revolved around the Centrists in Kanu and the Majimboists in Kadu,” Prof Kindiki.

It is this divide that underpinned the struggle for independence in 1950s and 1960s, kick starting an ideological war that is yet to be resolved to this day.

Reported by Justus Wanga, Ibrahim Oruko and Mwangi Muiruri