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Moses Kuria Issues Conditions for His Support for BBI
With the BBI signature collection exercise taking shape across many counties, Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria has come out to spell minimum conditions the report must meet to warrant his support.
Through his Facebook post on Sunday morning, Kuria, whose reception towards the document has been lukewarm since the last amendments, stated that the BBI team should first make more amendments for him to consider his support.
In particular, Kuria pointed out the endorsement of creating a voluminous house of up to 640 MPs, saying the additional 70 constituencies and nomination of 180 women MPs to curb the gender balance menace in the house will not sail smoothly with many taxpayers.
According to Kuria, the country’s economy was ailing and any move by the report to burden Kenyans more will bring the economy to its knees. Kuria urged Kenyans to reject the report, should the proposals remain the same.
“Unless the BBI Constitution Amendment Bill is revised to remove creation of a 640 Member parliament- including nomination of 180 women MPs- me and my house will vote NO. I urge all my friends and supporters to do the same. This economy is in ICU. We cant afford it. You decide if you want food on the table or salaries and big cars for 640 MPs. #DoubleDeckerParliament#PunguzaMzigo” read Kuria’s post.
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s MP lamented that the current parliament’s budget is already Ksh34 billion and the additional MPs will result in an extra Ksh 20 billion, taking the total to Ksh 54 billion.
On Thursday, Kuria lamented about the addition of 180 nominated MPs in the final draft, saying the additional 70 seats were just fine without nominated slots.
Kuria said the nominated positions were of no use since such legislators will have no duties to carry out in parliament.
The second term MP read malice in the government’s intentions, saying the nominated slots have been created to allow the state to intimidate the MPs to vote in a particular way.
Initially, the BBI report provided for 70 extra NOMINATED MPs based on Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMPR) to remedy the densely populated constituencies. Then while implementing ‘editorial and grammatical changes’ this was changed to 70 actual additional constituencies which makes sense.
Then from the Blues they introduced up to 180 NOMINATED MPs ostensibly to cure the gender rule. Why is someone so desperately obsessed with NOMINATED MPs? What are they supposed to deliver in parliament? Is it because they can be intimidated to vote a certain way as we have seen in the Senate and County Assemblies?” posed Kuria.