ODM party’s director of communications Philip Etale has issued a response to rants of Mumias East MP Peter Salasya on former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

In a brief statement on Saturday, November 16, 2024, Etale questioned Salasya’s standing to question Raila who on Friday, November 15, 2024, reprimanded MPs for attempting to have their way on the Revenue Division Bill standoff.

“Peter Kalerwa Salasya, you have no locus standi to speak about Raila Odinga. You have no stamina, my friend,” Etale said.

This came after Salasya stated that Raila was in cahoots with the county governors to ensure that counties get more resources from the national government.

Stifle Parliament’s role

Salasya also claimed that Raila was out to stifle the members of parliament’s role through the reduction of the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NGCDF) and Government Affirmative Action Fund (NGAAF) and reduce them to beggars.

“After him realising he could not auction independent-minded MPs like me to Ruto he wants CDF to go so that he can auction all of us to worship Ruto to beg for development in our regions,” Salasya said.

On Friday, November 15, 2024, Raila called on the members of the National Assembly to consider going by the dictates of the constitution in the standoff on the division of Revenue Bill of 2024.

Whereas members of the National Assembly maintain the counties should receive a total budget of Ksh380 billion, the members of the Senate say the constitution puts the figure at Ksh400 billion.

Strangle devolution

Raila stated that the MPs’ attempt to control what the counties get in revenue allocation was an attempt to strangle devolution.

“The standoff and attempts to tamper with allocations are a dangerous backward march. I urge MPs to be enablers of devolution and refuse to be in partnership with those determined to frustrate and kill it,” Raila said during a press conference at his Capitol Hill office in Nairobi.

Raila pointed fingers at the MPs, indicating that the legislators were overstepping their mandate by attempting to take over the Road Maintenance Levy funds on top of their CDF and NGAAF.

“MPs are also scheming to dip their fingers on the more executive projects such as the Road Maintenance Levy Fund in addition to the National Government Constituencies Development Fund (NGCDF) and the National Govt Affirmative Action Fund. The law assigns three roles to MPs; representation, legislation and oversight,” Raila noted.

Adding: “Execution or implementation of programs has never been and can never be the job for parliament without creating a serious accountability crisis in our governance system to the detriment of us all.”