Editor's Review

"He has time to appear before Citizen TV, but he has no time to appear before this house."

Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna has slammed Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi after he failed to appear for a scheduled plenary session in the Senate.

CS Mbadi wrote to the Speaker of the Senate, Amason Kingi, on Wednesday, May 7, morning informing him that he was unbale to attend the session as he has other official engagements.

Speaking on the floor of the house, Senator Sifuna called out Mbadi, saying he should have informed the house earlier that he would not be appearing.

“Yesterday, just before the game between Inter Milan and Barcelona, I saw CS for Treasury on Citizen TV. He has time to appear before Citizen TV, but he has no time to appear before this house.

“I refused to watch that interview and switched to the football match because I was expecting him here. The conversations that are important to me from that CS are the ones that happen here. The CSs must write on time to tell the house that they will not be showing up. If a CS insists on writing on the day before, that is absolute contempt, and they must be called out,” said Sifuna.

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File image of Edwin Sifuna. 

The ODM Secretary General went on to say he would defend CSs who skip the Senate plenary session even if they are affiliated with the ODM party.

“For as long as I remain the senator of Nairobi, and the oath that I took on the first day that I came to this house, there is not going to be a minister that we are going to protect or babysit. It doesn’t matter whether they come from ODM or wherever. They are there to serve the public.” Sifuna added.

Kakamega Senator Boni Khalwale also chided CS Mbadi for skipping the session, adding that the CS also failed to attend the Finance and Budget Committee meeting on Tuesday.

“I'm equally concerned. I sit in the Senate finance and budget committee, and CS did to us the same thing yesterday with his excuse being he was attending cabinet, and you can see he was not attending cabinet but was in a rally,” Khwalwe stated.

The UDA Senator added that Parliament must call out CSs when they fail to attend Senate sessions.

“If this parliament is not going to rise, what is happening in the broad-based government is not going to be any different from what we saw in the grand coalition,” said Khalwale.