Kipipiri MP Amos Kimunya has made a grand comeback to the national limelight after maintaining a relatively low profile for almost a decade.
The man who once said that he would rather die than resign as Finance minister was on Monday picked by President Uhuru Kenyatta as the Leader of the Majority in the National Assembly.
Kimunya takes over from Garissa Township MP Aden Duale who has served in the position for seven years.
Kimunya has vowed to unite the Jubilee coalition that is rocked by a bitter split.
“There are no rebels in the Jubilee Party. We do not have Jubilee “A” or “B”. I intend to cultivate one Jubilee, driving one agenda,” he promised, shortly after taking over.
Born in 1962, the Kipipiri lawmaker was first elected to Parliament in 2002 on a Narc ticket and won a re-election in 2007.
However, his political life has been marked by one controversy after another.
At one point after losing his Kipipiri seat in 2013, he wrote to his constituents calling them thankless and unappreciative for voting him out.
The voters had elected Samuel Gichigi who was his former personal assistant.
Kimunya had by then served residents of Kipipiri as their representative to the National Assembly for 10 uninterrupted years and held various ministerial portfolios.
He would make a political comeback in 2017 after securing the same seat on Jubilee Party ticket.
Kimunya was first appointed to Cabinet by then President Kibaki where he served as Lands and Settlement minister.
In 2006, he was moved to the lucrative Finance docket after David Mwiraria stepped aside to clear his name over the Anglo Leasing scam.
Kimunya served as the country’s Finance minister up to 2007.
It was during his stint at the Treasury that he engaged ODM leader Raila Odinga in a heated debate in the House, telling the Opposition chief that Nairobi Securities Exchange was not a fish market.
Like his predecessor, Kimunya would find himself entangled in yet another scandal, this time regarding the sale of the Grand Regency Hotel to a Libyan firm.
Then Ikolomani MP Boni Khalwale successfully came up with one of the most dramatic censure motions in Kenyan history.
"To stop corruption at the Treasury, Kimunya must go! To end impunity in this country, Kimunya must go! To repossess the Hotel Grand Regency, Kimunya must go!" Khalwale thundered as he moved the motion.
But a defiant Kimunya vowed he would not budge, saying "he would rather die than resign."
However, he was pushed out of his ministerial duties to pave way for an independent commission of inquiry that later cleared him of any wrong doing.
Consequently, President Kibaki reinstated him back to the Cabinet in charge of Trade.
Before his elevation to be the leader of government business in the National Assembly on Monday, Kimunya had been named as the Jubilee coalition secretary, a role that has now been handed over to Eldas MP Adan Keynan.
Edited by Henry Makori
