Murang'a Senator Irungu Kanga’ata should be fired as Senate Majority Chief Whip once the BBI is passed, Nyeri Town MP Ngunjiri Wambugu has said.
The MP said Kang'ata does not deserve the post 'because he wrote a letter to the President and leaked it to the public to provoke the head of state to fire him, so he could claim he was sacked for speaking the truth'.
“We first need to prove to him that what he said is not true, and I would like him to be fired once the BBI passes,” he said.
Wambugu said Kang’ata should not be given the job of selling the BBI to the public but should be given the responsibility, which he has bestowed upon himself, of doing and releasing BBI polls.
“We don’t expect him to sell BBI to Kenyans. We are quite clear he cannot sell it, and he is looking for excuses not to sell it, so we will not ask him to sell BBI. But we will sell it," he said.
The MP said he was extremely disappointed and embarrassed that somebody bestowed with such a high office like the Murang’a senator could engage in mischief of that magnitude.
Kang’ata in the letter had argued that the BBI was not acceptable in Mt Kenya.
“His argument is that out of 10 people he has spoken with in Murang’a, two support BBI, two are not sure while six do not support BBI,” he said.
Kang'ata said the BBI referendum might fail in Mt Kenya unless President Uhuru Kenyatta and his handshake partner Raila Odinga change their strategy.
He said he had come to the conclusion that BBI is unpopular in Mt Kenya and wanted Uhuru to take charge of marketing BBI in the region, saying the current campaign is uncoordinated.
The senator has since explained that it was not his intention to have the letter leaked to the public.
But Wambugu said, “He cannot tell us that he did not intend for this one to leak. As far as I am concerned, Kang’ata deliberately leaked that letter.”
He said Kang’ata must have sat down and developed a concept of how he would puncture the BBI process, wrote the letter and leaked it to the press himself.
The MP said it was interesting to note that Kang’ata was responding to the letter more than 24 hours after the reactions were not what he had expected.
However, Wambugu said that it was a good thing, assuming the survey by Kang’ata was scientific and real, as 90 per cent of people in Mt Kenya have never got the copies of the proposal.
He said 20 per cent was a good figure to start with as campaigns have not been launched to support the BBI.
“So what Kang’ata is telling us is that despite a very aggressive campaign against BBI, 20 per cent of the people in Murang’a support the BBI,” he said.
This, he said, is despite not having read the document or had any civic education.
This means if campaigns were started aggressively, which he said are set to start immediately, then the number will go up significantly.
“Three weeks later, Kang’ata’s poll will most likely be at 60 per cent,” he said.
But he said it was unfortunate that Kang’ata looked at it from a negative perspective as he was trying to sabotage BBI.
He said although the senator was looking for an excuse to leave BBI, no one will be forced to support it.
