Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna has dismissed the Treasury’s warning to Parliament that amendments to the 2024 Finance Bill will cause a Ksh.200 billion gap in the revenue projected in the 2024/2025 budget.
Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung’u last week presented budget cuts that will be implemented if the tax proposals in the controversial draft law are not approved, among them a Ksh.21.7 billion slash from the Energy Department’s budget, as well as Ksh.18.9 billion from the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) allocation.
But Sifuna on Monday dismissed the Treasury’s warning as a ‘dog whistle’, a term used for subtle political messages intended for and only understandable by a particular group.
He called Prof Ndung’u’s letter a threat to legislators, citing what he called a deliberate slashing of funds to key affairs MPs deal with, such as the Ksh.15 billion cut from NG-CDF.
“That letter from The Treasury is a threat to certain members of the National Assembly. When the Treasury says they (MPs) will lose CDF, they know who they are talking to. The list of things to be cut is just a dog whistle to politicians,” Sifuna told Citizen TV’s Daybreak program on Monday.
The senator further shot down remarks by Belgut MP Nelson Koech, with whom he was on the panel discussion, on an expansion of Kenya’s democratic space under President William Ruto’s administration.
Sifuna cited the killing of Evans Kiratu and Rex Masai by the police during the nationwide peaceful protests against the Finance Bill, and also the ongoing abductions perceived to be targeting the demos’ organisers.
“The President has released his goons in police uniform to abduct people in broad daylight,” said Sifuna.
“Don’t talk to us about a free democratic space because we see what you’re doing to these young people. How do you tear-gas a ‘baddie’?”
