Alphonce SHIUNDU

Passionate night-long lobbying, the hands-off approach of opposition leader Raila Odinga not to have a favourite man, a last-minute entry of another opposition MP plus the rare independent voting among the MPs of the ruling Jubilee coalition propelled Rarieda MP Nicholas Gumbo to the helm of the National Assembly's most-crucial watchdog committee. In the Tuesday voting at the Main Parliament Buildings, Gumbo clinched the coveted influential seat in the Public Accounts Committee with 12 votes beating his party's national chairman John Mbadi (Suba) who got nine votes. Balambala MP Abdikadir Aden, who the MPs claimed was being fronted by the Jubilee coalition got four votes, while the last-minute entrant Andrew Mwadime (Mwatate) got one vote –his. The vote was through secret ballot. Eseli Simiyu (Tongaren) stepped down and said he was "standing by the party position, which was to elect Mbadi", but the Minority Leader Francis Nyenze, the Minority Whip Thomas...

Folks, bear with me. I am a journalist and ought to have picked the payments to KenRen moments after the Budget was read. I did not. It is a story I have covered in the hearings of the Public Accounts Committee report on the government accounts in the fiscal year 2007/2008. So this is going to take long to read, but if you want to understand the real issue, be my guest (in a good way). Since then, I have followed it keenly, trying to see exactly if the shameless theft of money under President Kibaki's government will go on. Thank God for people like Mwalimu Mati for pointing that out to me. We met at Parliament's County Hall where he'd come before the Budget Committee, to really tell them about the theft of public funds . It is an item under Public Debt in the Consolidated Fund Services. Just check page 16 on this Treasury link and confirm that this guy knows, a lot of times, what he's talking about. So, when I asked him, how come I couldn't pick it up, he ...