No apology to ODM: Kisumu County Governor Jack Ranguma has vowed to sack his staff who evicted Senator Anyang’ Nyong’o from a County Development Board meeting on Monday.
However, Ranguma said he would not apologise to the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party for the ’embarrassment’ caused to the party Secretary General, maintaining that the incident that occurred in his office was not a party affair.
Responding to the calls from ODM members that he owns the chaos and apologize to the top party organ, Ranguma insisted that he was not party to the fracas.
“I can only apologise to Nyong’o following what befell him in my office, but I have no reason to apologise to ODM,” he stated, adding that he neither breached any party rules nor went against the party manifesto to warrant an apology.
“I did not show any disrespect to the party, and neither did I intend to, because it is the party that sponsored me into office. I cannot therefore apologise because I was not responsible for the chaos,” he explained.
On Wednesday, the county ODM officials warned that they would recommend disciplinary action against the governor to the party’s National Executive Council should he fail to make an apology.
However, Ranguma maintained he did not hire the goons but stated that he had launched investigations to establish the county officials who stormed and disrupted the meeting chaired by Nyong’o in his capacity as the county senator.
“We have established that some of our staff participated in the incident and we have some of the names mentioned by Nyong’o himself, we will take action against them,” he confirmed.
Former Nyakach MP Ochieng Daima has however come to Ranguma’s defence, saying ODM should not put the governor to task to own the chaos and yet the party has not owned the fracas that happened at Kasarani in February where goons baptized “Men in Black” interrupted the party national elections.
“Although what happened was bad, the party should not demonise Ranguma because even Nyong’o has not publicly explained what transpired during the party’s botched elections,” Daima said.
Ranguma clarified that the fact that some of the rowdy youth who heckled Nyong’o hang around him in public meetings does not mean he paid them to humiliate the senator.
Although he indicated that the youths were hired by other politicians, he declined to inform the press whose interests they served at the meeting.
“The goons are known people who on many occasions are hired by politicians for particular reasons, but I do not know who paid them to disrupt the meeting,” he stated when pressed by the media.
Condemning the incident, Ranguma said he had other options to scuttle the meeting other than causing chaos had that been his intention.
“I would have avoided the senator or told him that the establishment of the board was against the law since the court had ruled on the matter, but not to hire goons,” he added.
The governor bowed to pressure from five MPs from the county who were also heckled alongside Nyongo. The legislators, alongside some members of the county assembly had asked Ranguma to come clean on the matter, on suspicion that he hired goons to disrupt the meeting.
-standardmedia.co.ke
