Nairobi County Senator, Edwin Sifuna, on Tuesday, September 27, expressed his dissatisfaction with the list of Cabinet nominees while calling upon members of the National Assembly to exercise their mandate during the vetting exercise.
Sifuna who is the Secretary General of the Orange Democratic Party argued that some of the nominees should be barred from holding office owing to their questionable integrity records.
"If our colleagues in the National Assembly stay true to their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, more than half of those criminals proposed should not make it to Cabinet," Sifuna stated.
Vetting and approval of the nominees will be among the first assignments of the newly elected members of the 13th parliament upon resumption of sittings. Approval by the National Assembly will subsequently pave way for the nominees to be sworn in as cabinet secretaries.
CS nominees in question either have pending criminal cases or were previously arraigned in court to face various charges.
Case in point is former Malindi MP Aisha Jumwa who was nominated as CS for Public Service. In 2019, Jumwa was charged with murder over the death of Gumbao Jola in Ganda, Malindi Constituency.
Gumbao was shot in a scuffle that ensued during a by-election in Kilifi County that year.
In April 2022, Jumwa appeared before the Mombasa Law Courts where her bodyguard was accused of firing at a crowd and subsequently killing the deceased.
The two, however, denied the charges and pleaded not guilty.
Former Meru Senator and the nominee for the Agriculture docket, Mithika Linturi, was also arraigned in court, in February 2022 over remarks bordering on hate speech.
However, the case was thrown out by a court in Nakuru with Chief Magistrate Ednah Nyaloti explaining that the prosecution and the police failed to meet the deadlines given to present evidence.
“I am very concerned about the wanton misuse of public resources by the office of the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) in arraigning people in court and wasting judicial time on matters that are not necessary. The resources should have been used to serve Kenyans better,” Linturi stated after winning the case.
In September 2021, the former Meru Senator was also charged with attempted rape in a hotel in Nanyuki.
Linturi, nonetheless, refuted the claims and was subsequently released on a Ksh500,000 case bond. He rubbished the claims terming them as politically instigated.
