Alphonce SHIUNDU

PHOTO/ RAILA'S FACEBOOK PAGE Opposition leader Raila Odinga Friday honoured a promise he made a week ago with the release of old names in a new style, this time, with an explosive declaration that the names were mysteriously deleted from President Uhuru Kenyatta's dossier on corruption. At a news conference in Nairobi's Capitol Hill offices, Mr Odinga said the name of Devolution Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru and electoral chief Issack Hassan as those that were left out of the final dossier that the chief executive of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission Halakhe Waqo submitted to Parliament four months ago. Raila’s statement came with just seven days to go to the day US President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive in the country to for a key visit at which he is scheduled to address the runaway corruption in the Jubilee administration . It also came a day after he met the chief of the Independent Electoral Commission, Raila said Waiguru and Hassan have to ...

QUICK READS: • Powerful cartels, rogue suppliers, and brokers target budget billions • Speaker says at least Sh300 billion exposed to theft, pilferage or wastage in procurement kickbacks, bribes. • Speaker Muturi proposes one government department to do purchases for the whole government • Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich insists purchases must be done prudently, projects priced competitively and the law obeyed • With 17 days left to the end of the financial year, Controller of Budget and Auditor General expected to give verdict on how public funds were spent • President Kenyatta has sent a memo to MPs to tighten the new procurement law to license all agents THE STORY:  The Jubilee administration has embarked on a policy and legislative drive to lock brokers, cartels and wheeler-dealers out of big-money government contracts. President Uhuru Kenyatta, Speaker Justin Muturi and Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury Henry Rotich have rolled out the three-prong...

Caption: President Uhuru is seen-off at the JKIA by the Cabinet Secretary of Interior and Coordination of National Government Maj. Gen. (Rtd.) Joseph Nkaissery the Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces Gen. Samson Mwathethe among other senior government officials as he leaves for Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania to attend the Emergency Summit for the EAC Heads of State on the Political Situation in the Republic of Burundi in this May 31, 2015 photo. Thanks to PSCU. President Uhuru Kenyatta tasted his first defeat in 2015 in the House when MPs, a majority from his ruling Jubilee coalition, voted to reject Dr Monica Juma, his nominee for the plum post of the Secretary to the Cabinet. The lawmakers in the National Assembly stamped their oversight authority and agreed with the committee that vetted Juma, the current Interior principal secretary to gauge her suitability for the seat of Secretary to the Cabinet. The verdict from the House was unanimous: the nominee had to be rejec...

I am sad. Not because of the renewed opacity in coverage of parliament – we can go around that— but because of the way issues of immense public interest are discussed behind closed doors because of, you guessed it, ‘national security’! I look at parliamentary journalism as one of those ways to expand the democratic space, to have people know what their leaders are talking about; the leaders to talk about the people’s needs, and for us – journalists and the people who read our stories— to keep these leaders on their toes. But today, the second day of June, 2015, is a sad one. The Senate had this pre-planned informal meetings – they are called The Speaker’s Kamukunji. They wanted to discuss insecurity in the country and terrorism. When Haji and Nkaissery were the bosses at the Ministry of Defence, they loved the limelight. They were politicians too. You can see the smiles on this screengrab. Now, that is a conversation that will help if Kenyans hear what their lea...

PHOTO CAPTION: The tables set for the National Prayer Breakfast at Nairobi's Safari Park Hotel, in this picture that I took early morning, two hours before the guests settled in.  A day after calling opposition politicians “fools” anddismissing their style of politics as “uncivilised”, President Uhuru Kenyatta joined other politicians and the country’s top officials for the annual prayer breakfast in Nairobi. The twist of the event saw politicians, who usually tear each other in public forums, and others of them known for impunity and misconduct, gather at the five-star Safari Park Hotel, to preach, pray and sing as they sought divine intervention in the problems of the country. That oddity was not lost on President Kenyatta and his Deputy President William Ruto, who when they rose to speak, had to tell the “wonderful politicians” -- in the President’s words-- to walk the talk. Ruto left the crowd in stitches when he said that the thought it was a “mistake” f...

The crucial talks to salvage the national budget for the next financial year had to be postponed for a fortnight following a bad-tempered disagreement between senators and members of the National Assembly in the team appointed by both Houses to reach a compromise on how much money counties should get. National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi threw the spanner in the works when he told MPs that it will be wrong for them to go ahead and look at the Sh2.1 trillion budget estimates without a law in place to determine the sharing of money between the national government and the 47 county governments. "The law is very clear that the counties and the national government should prepare budget estimates as per the Division of Revenue Act. That Act is not in place. Whatever they'll be doing will therefore be preparatory works," said Muturi just after Majority Leader Aden Duale tabled the budget estimates of the National Executive and those of the Judiciary. LEGAL SHORTCUTS Th...

The prospect of more women joining the country's politics on the back of a constitutional requirement was shattered yesterday with the publication of a new Bill that makes it "progressive" for that requirement of at least one-third of all elected or appointed officials to be from either gender. The move came as the final plot in the scheming of lawmakers to dodge the judicial deadline to make sure that the number of women in the country's bicameral Parliament entered the penultimate stage. The MPs quickly bulldozed the Bill into the First Reading just a day after it was published, because, they were headed for a month-long break. They said they want to amend article 81(b) to ensure that laws for women inclusion in political seats is done "progressively". "We want to make sure that this is progressively achieved over a period of time," said the chairman of the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee Samuel Chepkonga. READ ALSO: ADEN DUAL...