•Faki says cracks widening between the executive and the assembly
•The governor claims Speaker Kharti demand 200 free parking stickers from Transport executive but he refused, possibly prompting impeachment motion
Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho yesterday differed sharply withSenator Mohamed Faki over feuding between the executive and the assembly.
The senator had petitioned the Senate to mediate following the discord that prompted a lobby group to start collecting signatures to dissolve the county government.
Appearing before the Senate’s Devolution and Intergovernmental Relations Committee, Joho downplayed the wrangles and termed Faki’s claims as nonsense.
The governor said he was not aware of the existence of any lobby group or plans to dissolve the county government.
“We will not respond to hearsay. We are not in a position to respond to political theatrics. I don’t know where you picked up that information that you brought before the House,” Joho said.
In the petition, Faki had said cracks have been widening between the executive and the assembly for three weeks after three of Joho’s executives defied or declined invitations to appear before the MCAs.
The three executives — Transport, Sports and Lands — also defied subsequent summonses by respective committees of the county assembly to appear before them for questioning.
He said after the alleged defiance, one of the committees — Transport — threatened to impeach Transport executive Twafiq Balala.
“Days after the MCAs threatened to impeach the executive. a lobby group under the slogan fagia assembly came and symbolically swept the assembly. Last week, they started collecting signatures to dissolving the county government. As the senator, I thought they had gone too far,” Faki told the panel.
But Joho, who has called himself the Sultan of devolution, rubbished claims that his executive defies summonses and demanded the senator to provide proof.
Joho said assembly Speaker Arub Kharti is behind the clamour to impeach Twafiq after the Transport executive refused to issue him with 200 free car parking stickers.
“There is no way the assembly can purport to be impeaching an executive because he declined to grant a waiver for 200 vehicles not to pay for parking. You cannot impeach an executive on flimsy and personal grounds,” he said.
The MCAs have been planning to impeach Twafiq, the governor’s close ally and most trusted executive.
But the Senate committee, chaired by Laikipia Senator John Kinyua, urged the assembly to put on hold the planned impeachment until the panel listens to both sides of the county government.
Kharti, who was expected to appear before the committee yesterday, failed to show up and instead wrote a letter saying that he was sick. The committee ordered that he appears on Thursday alongside county assembly majority leader, majority chief whip and clerk.
More than 50,000 signatures are also reported to have been collected by the group to kick start the process of dissolving the county government.
ODM has summoned the MCAs to Orange House today over the wrangles but they are not expected to attend, claiming it's a plot to delay the impeachement.
The assembly is dominated by ODM members. Out of the 30 elected members, 27 were elected on ODM tickets, one on a Wiper Party ticket, one on Ford Kenya and the other was independent.
Yesterday, there was stir at the committee meeting after Nandi Senator Samson Cherargi asked Joho if he would attend the MCA's meeting in his capacity as ODM Deputy Party Leader.
“They (DP William Ruto’s allied MPs) have been talking about ODM for the last one week or so, understandably so. ODM is in their mouth,” Joho said.