Parliament’s virtual meetings on Tuesday gave senators a glimpse — an earful, actually — of what our county bosses think about them. A governor from one of the northern counties, a man who is not tech-savvy, left the audio on after grilling before a departmental committee in Parliament. He immediately engaged his officials on how he managed to give the senators a dose of their own medicine during the session that lasted less than 40 minutes. The lawmakers heard the governor chest-thumping about how he managed to dodge the senators and keep them from asking difficult questions. “That is how to deal with the senators,” the governor was heard boasting. Members of the committee now want the second-term governor summoned to explain his out-of-session utterances, which the members claim are contemptuous.
Members of a parliamentary watchdog committee earlier this week were engrossed in exchanges among themselves over a governor who was right before them. The lawmakers exchanged bitter words as the governor and his team watched and listened in disbelief. At the core of the exchanges was whether to send the governor away for submitting ‘unauthenticated’ documents. A faction of the lawmakers defended the governor, saying he should not be held liable for documents that had been verified by the auditor. “Hata wewe huchunga watu (Even you, you defend your own)”, a senator told colleagues pressing for adjournment of the meeting to give the county chief time to submit original copies of the documents. The remarks sparked nasty exchanges, forcing the chairman to intervene to “protect our integrity”.
A heated debate in the Senate on Wednesday on the decision of the Council of Governors to shut down counties has lifted the lid on the deep-rooted rivalry between senators and the county bosses. The lawmakers attacked the umbrella body and its boss Wycliffe Oparanya. They termed CoG ‘a club of boys and a few ladies that have no powers’ and directed their anger at Oparanya, calling him a traitor murderer, a failure and a liar, among other nasty words. Soon after the debate, some senators congregated outside the debating chamber and congratulated themselves for “maximising”’ the rare opportunity to “call out the thieves”.