Fiery Senate's majority leader Kipchumba Murkomen, on Sunday, September 8, slammed President Uhuru Kenyatta while appearing on K24 TV's Punchline programme hosted by Anne Kiguta.
According to the outspoken leader, Uhuru and his office were not constitutionally mandated to engage in revenue allocation to the counties.
Murkomen further argued that the president's wading into the debate regarding county revenue allocations undermined negotiations around the matter in that no other players were willing to contradict him.
Uhuru has previously been quoted telling off governors that the country did not have money to spare for the increase from Ksh316 million to Ksh335 million.
"It is not for the president. That is not the constitutional job of the president. He should be quiet on issues regarding the allocation of revenue.
"In fact, by putting pressure on the institutions of government and by the president pronouncing himself, he made it difficult for negotiations to proceed because you can see governors could not even defend themselves, the judiciary could not make a decision," Murkomen explained.
"They (Judiciary) felt sufficiently intimidated to make a decision in good time. The president does not have money to allocate anybody. It is parliament which has a responsibility to allocate money to the national government and the counties," added Murkomen.
The eloquent politician also took the opportunity to shed light on the recently completed Orange Democratic Movement's (ODM) party nominations that saw Ken Okoth's brother, Bernard "Imran" Okoth, clinch the party's ticket.
The Elgeyo Marakwet senator disclosed that Imran was not Raila Odinga's candidate of choice.
"In fact, there is a political analysis that Imran was not his preferred candidate and that if it was up to him he would have wanted somebody else to win," opined the senator.
He, nevertheless, congratulated ODM for finally choosing their candidate and even went ahead to shower Imran with compliments stating that he was a fantastic guy.
