House team accuses minister of being held hostage by treasury mandarins and trying to blackmail Parliament.
BY NATION TEAM.
Finance minister Njeru Githae has “ambushed” Parliament with a request to withdraw sh424 billion from the Consolidated Fund to run the government. The minister said the withdrawal is a stop-gap measure to access half the budget money pending parliamentary approval of a law that will legalize the withdrawal.
The minister wrote to Parliament at lunchtime yesterday and walked to the House an hour later to present his request in a move that raised a huge uproar from the Budget Committee. The members of the House team accused the minister of flouting the Constitution.
The chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Elias P. Mbau, led MPs John Mbadi (Gwassi), Shakeel Shabbir (Kisumu Town East), Moses Lessonet (Eldama Ravine), in accusing the minister of being held hostage by a cabal of “mandarins who had not yet conformed to the provisions of the new Constitution.”
“This is what you call an ambush. This does not demonstrate goodwill. We all knew the minister was new in that ministry, but he’s trying to occasion a crisis.”
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If the push and pull continues and the MPs stand their ground, they could shut down the government beginning July 1 when the next financial year begins. Or the Treasury could be forced to illegally access the Consolidated Fund and spend money without parliamentary approval.
The MPs are also piqued that Mr. Githae has refused to cut domestic and foreign travel expenses in all ministries as recommended by the House. They said that the technocrats at the Treasury were trying to blackmail them to breach the law, yet Parliament had already approved the cuts.
“The minister is trying to tell us that this will affect the mileage claims payable to MPs and that the cuts to capital grants will affect the allocation to the Constituency Development Fund. This is the height of impunity,” said Mr. Mbadi.
To the MPs, the minister was trying to pull an illegality that his predecessor at the Treasury, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, did last year and which the courts ruled as unconstitutional. The MPs insisted that the minister had to bring an Appropriations Bill, taking into account the report of the Budget Committee as adopted by Parliament.
DAILY NATION,
Thursday June 21, 2012.
Page 34.
Hon Elias P. Mbau 
