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Elachi: I am not fighting Sonko


Nairobi County Assembly Speaker Beatrice Elachi has denied reports that she is engaged in a fight over the running of the government with Governor Mike Sonko.

Elachi said she had no personal differences with Sonko but pointed out that the governor does not like her because of her insistence on following the rule of law.

CONTENTIOUS BILL

“I have no issue with him. In fact he has never come to me to say I want the Speaker to do this for me and I refused. I have protected him several times although he does not like me,” said Ms Elachi.

“I have my values and point out what is right or wrong and I will always tell him what is right according to the law and that is where we are not on the same page,” she added.

The two leaders are on opposite sides on the contentious Nairobi County Supplementary Appropriation Bill that allocated Sh15 billion to the Nairobi Metropolitan Service (NMS).

The Bill was approved by the Assembly on April 2, but the city governor refused to assent to it and instead sent it back to the assembly with his reservations.

However, when MCAs rejected his reservations and the Speaker sent the original Bill back to him to apped his signature, but he still declined to sign it into law.

STALEMATE

On the stalemate, Elachi said the Assembly is only trying to conduct its oversight role on both the NMS and the Sonko government and is not picking a war him.

She said the Bill was to realign the budget and allocate funds to the transferred functions as per the Deed of Transfer of functions and save money for services that can be delivered before the current financial year ends on June 30.

“We just gave money to NMS and the Governor as the former is an administrative arm that needs money to function. The House is trying to sanitise what the Executive has been doing wrong as they have been spending without raising a supplementary budget,” she said.

The speaker asked Sonko to respect the Assembly and forge a working relationship instead of acting like there is a war between the executive and the Assembly.

“We need each other and we do not need to fight. I wish we can sit down and solve all these problems so that we do not have same fights in the next budget,” added Ms Elachi.