- Sifuna wants the office of the President and that of the deputy president to be summoned to respond to the issues.
- He wants President Ruto to come out and state his position about Gachagua's utterances.
Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna has filed a motion in the Senate seeking to debate Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua's conduct.
In the motion dated February 21, Sifuna wants the Senate to censure Gachagua over what he terms as attempts to marginalise sections of the country.
According to Sifuna, the DP's utterances that the country is a commercial enterprise with shareholders are dangerous and likely to isolate certain regions from government services.
He argues that Gachagua recent remarks are a blatant attempt to balkanize the country into vote blocks and enclaves, based on the results of the last elections.
“Mr Speaker, marginalization often begins as a roadside decree before it graduates to government policy,” Sifuna says in the motion received by the Senate's Directorate of Committees on the same day.
“It is incumbent upon us to establish fast if any such words arc already government policy and if indeed they are what recourse is available to Kenyans who have been excluded from being shareholders in the so-called commercial enterprise,” he said.
Sifuna says that in the age of enlightenment and globalization, no section of the population will readily pay taxes to fund services for enterprises in which it is not a shareholder.
“Of greater concern is that his boss, the President, has found nothing wrong with his utterances and has yet to contradict or reprimand the DP,” he says.
Sifuna says the president's silence, persuades even the most optimistic observer that in fact, the DP has the blessings of the highest office in the land to balkanize the country into what amounts to the secession of parts of the nation.
“It may no longer be fine to just dismiss the DP's words as his own, without considering that such weighty matters he prosecutes callously on the national stage may indeed be on behalf of his boss,” he says.
Sifuna wants the office of the President and that of the deputy president to be summoned to respond to the issues to establish if Gachagua's position is also the official government position.
“ If yes, does the Kenya Revenue Authority still reserve the right to collect taxes from all Kenyans if indeed they are used to provide services to only sections of the population?” Sifuna posed.
He wants the two offices to confirm if the continued "divisive politics of the DP " are entrenched in the Kenya Kwanza DNA and Kenyans can therefore expect nothing better in the coming years.
“ Should it be considered fair if sections of Kenya marginalized by this official position of the regime proceed to create their own revenue collection authority in order to provide services in areas considered non-shareholders by the current Kenya Kwanza regime?” asked Sifuna.
Sifuna wants President Ruto to come out and state his position about Gachagua's utterances.
He says every person is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law and that no election victory and loss can negate the principles.
"Indeed, the right to make a choice at an election is itself a powerful tool of democracy that safeguards citizens against dictatorship and entrenched marginalisation," he said. By James Mbaka, The Star
