Elgeyo Marakwet senator Kipchumba Murkomen spoke in an interview with KTN on Wednesday, November 27, hours after he was heckled at the Bomas of Kenya where the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report was being unveiled.
Murkomen maintained that he was only raising concern over how the schedule and the criteria used to select guests. He faulted the master of ceremony Junet Mohamed for being partisan.
“An opportunity was granted to my friend Junet but instead of taking that opportunity to rise above parochial politics and run the program as a national program, he converted it to an ODM, Kieleweke conversation,” the senator argued.
Murkomen went further to explain that he supported the document and was only attending the event to celebrate, but he felt he had to speak for those who had been denied a chance at the podium.
He defended his comments at Bomas, saying that it was obvious to everyone that only a handful of leaders associated with the Deputy President William Ruto were given a chance to speak.
“The only person who spoke at that function who is not part of that team [Kieleweke] was me, governor Kiraitu and honourable Duale,” Murkomen recounted.
He went on to say that the heckling was planned and had nothing to do with what he said at the event.
“Even before I began to speak it looked like the people had been mobilized...no sooner had I made my first sentence, they started heckling,” he told the interviewer.
The senator singled out Members of Parliament that he claimed led the heckling, labelling them an ‘embarrassment’.
‘What was embarrassing was that the people who were heckling me were people like [Rachel] Shebesh, people like [Gladys] Wanga and Babu Owino. I look at it and just laugh,” an amused Murkomen narrated.
He finished by admitting that he had reservations about how the BBI report was compiled but was impressed by the end product.
