Elgeyo Marakwet Senator Kipchumba Murkomen on Saturday returned to the Mau forest and urged the evictees to stay put even as a section of Jubilee leaders said the move reeks of disobedience to President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Murkomen said he will not sit and watch as innocent Kenyans are thrown out of the Mau by a government that is more focused on nurturing the handshake than caring about its people.
He said he will continue fighting for the plight of the evictees even if it is a delicate balancing act for his House leadership.
“Some people went to report in Nairobi that I should be removed as the Senate majority leader because of our children who haven’t gone to school, our parents who have been hurt and the old who are sleeping outside,” Murkomen said.
He reiterated his claims that opposition leader Raila Odinga is behind the evictions saying the president, as he has come to know him, cannot do such things.
“That president that I defended even as others were being sworn in as unofficial presidents, I know him as a president who loves the common man and if he has changed I would know,” Murkomen said.
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The senator was accompanied by several Julibee leaders including Emurua Dikirr MP Joanna Ng’eno and Kericho Senator Aaron Cheruiyot.
They were on the Kericho side of the forest at Sierra Leone where they planned to donate iron sheets to evictees but were blocked by security officers.
They told the evictees not to leave.
“These Kenyans are Kenyans during campaigns but after campaigns, the county commissioner turns them into animals and says this is a forest. Or is he telling us the president was asking for votes from the forest?” quipped Cheruiyot.
Ng’eno backed Murkomen’s sentiments that they will not stand and watch as the evictees are mistreated.
“Let everyone hear. We will not accept the suffering that the children are going through. We will not accept the suffering that mothers are going through,” he said.
The eviction, which is being conducted by a combined team of security officers and forest warders, has so far seen the eviction of over 7,000 families.
Murkomen said the families find themselves in that position because of the March 9 handshake and the infiltration into the government by some people through the back door.
He made the same remarks on Thursday while addressing evictees at Koitoben in Melelo ward, Narok South constituency.
“This relationship they are saying that I should not talk about, is it better than the lives of 40,000 children who are out of school? Is the relationship better than mothers and old men sleeping in the cold,” Murkomen posed.
He said the government is turning its attention on non-issues while serious issues like the importation of contraband sugar and the corruption at the National Youth Service was being given little prominence.
The Senate Majority leader asked the President to visit the Mau himself and declare a stand.
"I have returned to Mau again and because you don't believe what I'm telling you and because brokers are telling you that I'm abusing you, come here in Mau in person."
The senator later said in a tweet that he's guilty as charged if championing the rights of the oppressed amounts to disrespecting the country's leadership.
"If by standing with the poor, the weak and young children who are suffering in Mau I am being disrespectful, then I am guilt as charged. Mahatma Ghandi once said “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treat s its weakest members.”
On Friday, Nairobi Senator Johnson Sakaja told Murkomen to stop disrespecting the president by inciting Kenyans against his initiatives.
He also said his attacks on Raila were undermining the Building Bridges initiative and the war on corruption.
“It is unfortunate the attacks are by leaders of high standing in the party,” Sakaja said, noting that the behaviour will not be tolerated within Jubilee.
Murang’a Governor Mwangi wa Iria repeated the sentiments on Saturday saying disgruntled Jubilee leaders should seek internal dispute resolution mechanisms.
“As leaders, we are the most visible ambassadors of Jubilee Party. But when the rank and file of our party's leadership opts to petition their protestations in public, that amounts to disrespect to the presidency which is in essence the head of the party and the government,” the governor said in a statement.
“When we all resort to whipping our backyards or support bases whenever we have an issue we want to air or sorted, we lose the bigger picture of why we even exist as a ruling party,” he added.
Meanwhile, as Murkomen spoke on Saturday, Baringo senator Gideon Moi was on the Narok side of the Mau forest at Triangle area where he equally criticized the government over the evictions.
The Kanu chairman termed the exercise as inhumane saying that he will reach out to the government to find a lasting solution to the Mau problem.
“These are law abiding people yet they have been mistreated. Their houses have been torched, their children have been lost and mothers are sleeping in the cold. That cannot be tolerated,” Moi said.
He was accompanied by former Bomet Governor Issac Rutto who said the government was creating non-existent problems since the evictees had not encroached on forest land beyond the cut-line drawn by the government.
“They have not gone beyond the cut-line, so what is the problem?” Rutto posed.
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