Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

Qatar FM: No substitute for Assad’s departure

{Qatari foreign minister says ‘de-escalation zones’ are a step towards reaching a solution and not the solution itself.}

Qatar’s foreign minister has said that “de-escalation zones” are not a substitute for political transition in Syria, adding that President Bashar al-Assad ought to leave office in any final peace agreement.

Speaking to Al Jazeera in Washington, DC on Monday, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the de-escalation zones “are a step towards reaching a solution and not the solution itself”.

“There should be a clear message that political transition is based on the Geneva I declaration, which ends with Bashar al-Assad and his regime leaving power and the establishment of a transitional authority,” Al Thani said.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy to Syria, has said talks between the Syrian government and opposition on ending the war are to reconvene in Geneva on May 16.

De Mistura says he hopes that an agreement reached in Astana last week between Russia, Iran and Turkey to set up the Russian-sponsored de-escalation zones will be fully implemented.

On Monday, Walid al-Moualem, Syria’s foreign minister, said there would be no role for the UN or other “international forces” in the so-called de-escalation zones but that Russia saw an observer role for its military police.

He gave no further details.

“We do not accept a role for the United Nations or international forces to monitor the agreement,” he said.

Russia said on Monday that it had tabled a draft UN Security Council resolution backing the de-escalation zone deal.

A source at the UN told Russia’s Interfax news agency that “a vote on the draft will take place possibly this week”.

Russia and regional power Iran have helped President Bashar al-Assad gain the military advantage against rebels fighting for six years to unseat him.

Russia has led most of the recent diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.

{{‘Dragged on too long’}}

Moualem also addressed what he described as an apparent change of attitude toward Syria by the US administration.

“It seems the United States, where (President Donald) Trump has said the Syrian crisis has dragged on too long, might have come to the conclusion that there must be an understanding with Russia on a solution,” he said.

He warned that if forces from Jordan, a supporter of rebel groups in southern Syria, entered the country without coordinating with Damascus, it would be considered an act of aggression, but added Syria was not about to confront Jordan.

Speaking about the military situation inside Syria, Moualem said Deir Az Zour, a city and province occupied by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in the east, was the “fundamental objective” for government forces and more important to the average Syrian than Idlib.

Asked about US backing for Kurdish groups fighting ISIL in northeast Syria, he said that what Syrian Kurds were doing against the jihadist group was “legitimate” at this stage and fell within the framework of preserving Syrian unity.

The Syrian civil war was born from unrest that started in March 2011. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed.

Source:Al Jazeera

May 9, 2017
Palestinians mourn Fatima Hjeiji in the West Bank

{Fatima Hjeiji was the seventh Palestinian child to be killed by Israeli security forces in 2017.}

Occupied West Bank, Palestine – At the Hjeiji family home in the occupied West Bank village of Qarawat Bani Zeid, classmates, friends and relatives of Fatima Hjeiji lined up to pay their respects.

One by one, the women and girls hugged Fatima’s mother Dareen and offered sympathetic words.

“She was such a lovely girl. Everybody at school loved her,” said Nadin Imad, 17, who attended the girls’ school in the village with Fatima.

“I was in class with her since the first grade. She had a very strong character and was not afraid to say whatever she wanted.”

The previous afternoon had begun like any other afternoon in the Hjeiji household. Fatima, 16, had returned home from school around 1.30pm and updated her mother on the morning’s events.

“It was a normal day, nothing unusual,” said Dareen Hjeiji.

“She told me about her school day, friends, teachers and her work. I had to visit the doctor so I left the house to go to the appointment. Fatima didn’t tell me she was going to Jerusalem to visit her relatives.”

Fatima’s uncle Salameh Hjeiji told Al Jazeera that he believed the teenager had gone to visit another uncle and aunt who lived in the Old City of Jerusalem.

However, the teenager had not told her immediate family of any plans to do so and did not have an entry permit that would have enabled her to pass through the Israeli checkpoints that separate Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank.

{{Alleged attack}}

Later that evening a family member received a phone call from the DCO, the joint Palestinian-Israeli military coordination office in the West Bank, informing them that Fatima had been shot dead by Israeli paramilitary police close to Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.

Soon afterwards, Fatima’s father Afeef received a call from an Israeli intelligence official, asking him to come to Jerusalem and identify Fatima’s body.

He was also questioned by intelligence officers for three hours that evening, he told Al Jazeera.

The Israeli police said in a statement that Fatima had been holding a knife and tried to attack Israeli paramilitary officers close to an entrance to the Old City, who then shot and killed the teenager.

The statement added that a letter had been found on the dead girl, which cited Quranic verses, addressed her family and was signed “martyr”.

But Fatima’s mother could not fathom what had happened the previous evening and believed that the police officers had no justification for shooting and killing her daughter.

“I could never imagine that my daughter would do this,” she said. “I don’t believe what the Israeli police said.”

According to eyewitness reports cited by local media, Hjeiji had been standing around 10 metres away from the police officers when they shot her.

Some accounts noted that the police officers continued to fire at the teenager after she had fallen to the ground and no longer posed a threat.

Since a wave of sporadic violence began in October 2015, mostly involving Palestinian street attacks on Israelis, a number of local and international human rights groups have raised concerns that Israeli security forces have used excessive force when confronting Palestinians who had carried out attacks or been suspected of doing so.

The Israeli police relaxed its open-fire regulations in December 2015, permitting officers to open fire with live ammunition on those throwing stones or firebombs as an initial option, without having to use non-lethal weapons first.

In a recently published investigation, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem found that 101 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli security forces in 2016, including 31 minors.

The NGO reported that “these incidents were made possible by an open-fire policy that permits both shooting to kill in instances defined as ‘incidents of assault’ and a trigger-happy approach to demonstrations or stone-throwing”.

DCI-Palestine (DCIP), a children’s rights NGO, noted that Fatima was the seventh Palestinian child to be killed by Israeli security forces in 2017.

“Israeli security forces routinely use intentional force against Palestinian youth,” Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability programme director at DCIP, said in a statement.

“Such excessive force, without a modicum of accountability, signals tacit approval for killing children with impunity.”

The eldest of four siblings, Fatima had been a strong student and enjoyed writing poetry and speeches in her spare time, but she really excelled in mathematics, her family said.

“She was part of a club for gifted mathematics students in Ramallah,” said her mother Dareen.

Dareen described her as quiet, calm and kind, noting that she was popular among her classmates.

The teenager was politically aware and had ambitions to work in the media after completing her education.

“She was a good speaker and a good writer,” said Dareen. “She always watched the news because she wanted to be a journalist when she was older.”

Source:Al Jazeera

May 9, 2017
Top Malaysian ISIL operative killed in Syria

{Malaysian police confirm death of most wanted ISIL member Muhammad Wanndy Mohamed Jadi in a drone attack.}

Malaysia’s most-wanted member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), Muhammad Wanndy Mohamed Jadi, 26, has been killed in Syria, according to Malaysian police.

“After reviewing intelligence, the Royal Malaysian Police can confirm that Muhammad Wanndy has been killed in an attack in Raqqa, Syria on April 29,” Police Chief Khalid Abu Bakar said on his Twitter account, confirming previous reports of Wanndy’s death in a drone attack on the ISIL’s self-proclaimed capital.

News of his alleged death began to make rounds after his wife Nor Mahmudah Ahmad announced it in a Facebook post last month. However, police had earlier cast doubt on the reports stating that it was possible Wanndy had faked his own death to avoid detection.

Wanndy was the alleged mastermind behind a grenade attack on a bar in the outskirts of Kuala Lampur in June 2016 that injured eight people.

Following the attack, Wanndy claimed responsibility through a Facebook post. It was the first, and so far the only, attack by ISIL on Malaysian soil.

Born and raised in the western Malaysian state of Malacca, Wanndy left for Raqqa with his wife in 2014. He first drew public attention the following year when he appeared in a video showing the beheading of a Syrian man.

Under the alias of Abu Hamzah Al Fateh, he quickly made a name for himself as an ISIL recruiter and fundraiser.

Statistics from the Maylaysian police’s counterterrorism unit indicate that at least a third of the more than 250 people arrested for ISIL-linked activities in Malaysia between 2013 and 2016 were recruited by or linked to Wanndy.

In March, he was named a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” by the US Treasury, making him a high-profil target for law enforcement agencies worldwide.

Source:Al Jazeera

May 9, 2017
Egypt air force destroys vehicles crossing from Libya

{Military says 15 trucks carrying weapons from Libya demolished in air strikes but no details given on who was driving.}

The Egyptian military has flown multiple raids and destroyed 15 four-by-four vehicles crossing from Libya, deploying fighter jets and helicopter gunships in an operation that spanned 48 hours.

The military didn’t say who was driving the vehicles or give details of any casualties, news agencies reported.

The only information provided on Monday came on the Egyptian military’s Facebook page, which claimed the trucks were carrying weapons and other contraband.

The air force operation came as security forces killed eight fighters identified as members of the Muslim Brotherhood in a shootout in the country’s south, according to the interior ministry.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has launched the toughest crackdown on armed groups in Egypt’s modern history since toppling former president Mohamed Morsi of the Brotherhood in 2013.

Those killed included Helmi Masri Mohareb, a commander from Libya who transported fighters across Egypt’s southern border to join training camps, the interior ministry said in a statement.

The fighters planned “to form groups to carry out a series of hostile operations in the coming period by sending elements from these groups to join training camps abroad”, it said.

Egypt has outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood and designated it a “terrorist” group. The organisation maintains its activities are peaceful and had no immediate comment.

Morsi was elected as Egypt’s first civilian president in 2012, but the army overthrew him a year later following mass protests against his divisive rule. Since then, an extensive crackdown on the group has left it in disarray after security forces violently quashed their protests.

Source:Al Jazeera

May 9, 2017
South African town hit by riots after white farmers get bail

{Riots have hit a small town in South Africa after a magistrate granted bail to two white farmers accused of murdering a 16-year-old black boy.}

Anger erupted in the maize producing town of Coligny, after residents learned that the two suspects had been freed on Monday.

Three houses were torched and white-owned shops looted.

The violence over the death highlights prevailing racial tensions in parts of post-apartheid South Africa.

Apartheid was a legal system of discrimination that existed in South Africa until the country’s first democratic elections in 1994.

Pieter Doorewaad and Phillip Schutte allegedly assaulted Matlhomola Moshoeu and then threw him out of a moving car.

Local media report that the two farmers caught Mr Moshoeu stealing sunflowers on a farm near to the township where he lived, took him hostage and assaulted him.

They, however, say he jumped off a truck as they were taking him to the police.

Magistrate Magaola Foso told the court that he was aware that the case had led to increased tensions in the area, but said he could not have an emotional response, the AFP news agency reports.

“There is no link between the said witness evidence and the two [accused] persons at this stage,” AFP quotes the magistrate as saying.

The teenager’s cause of death is not yet known because the results of his autopsy report have not been handed over to the court.

Journalists who were covering the violence were allegedly attacked by the owners of properties targeted by the rioters. They were accused of inciting violence by covering the events.

Meanwhile farmers in the area are said to be on high alert, worried that they might become the next target as tensions continue. The police say they are monitoring the situation.

The two men are due back in court on 26 June.

Source:BBC

May 9, 2017
Amazing haul of ancient human finds unveiled

{A new haul of ancient human remains has been described from an important cave site in South Africa.}

The finds, including a well-preserved skull, bolster the idea that the Homo naledi people deliberately deposited their dead in the cave.

Evidence of such complex behaviour is surprising for a human species with a brain that’s a third the size of ours.

Despite showing some primitive traits it lived relatively recently, perhaps as little as 235,000 years ago.

That would mean the naledi people could have overlapped with the earliest of our kind – Homo sapiens.

In a slew of papers published in the journal eLife, Prof Lee Berger from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Prof John Hawks from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, and their collaborators have outlined details of the new specimens and, importantly, ages for the remains.

The H. naledi story starts in 2013, when the remains of almost 15 individuals of various ages were discovered inside the Dinaledi chamber – part of South Africa’s Rising Star Cave system.

At the same time, the researchers were exploring a second chamber about 100m away, known as Lesedi (“light” in the Setswana language which is spoken in the region).

The finds from Dinaledi were published in 2015, but remains from the Lesedi chamber had not previously been presented, until now.

The latest specimens include the remains of at least three individuals – two adults and a child.

One of the adults has a “wonderfully complete skull”, according to Prof Hawks. This tough-looking specimen is probably male, and has been named “Neo”, which means “a gift” in the Sesotho language of southern Africa.

Examination of its limb bones shows that it was equally comfortable climbing and walking.

The fact that Homo naledi was alive at the same time and in the same region of Africa as early forms of Homo sapiens gives us an insight into the huge diversity of different human forms in existence during the Late Pleistocene.

“Here in southern Africa, in this time range, you have the Florisbad skull, which may be an ancestor or close relative of modern humans; you’ve got the Kabwe skull, which is some kind of archaic human and possibly quite divergent; you’ve got evidence from modern people’s genomes that archaic lineages have been contributing to modern populations and may have existed until quite recently,” said Prof Hawks.

“You have this very primitive form of Homo [naledi] that has survived alongside these other species for a million years or more. It is amazing the diversity that we are now seeing that we had missed before.”

As to how H. naledi held on to its distinctive characteristics while living cheek-by-jowl with other human species, Prof Hawks said: “It’s hard to say it was geographic isolation because there’s no boundary – no barrier. It’s the same landscape from here to Tanzania; we’re in one continuous savannah, woodland-type habitat.

He added that the human-sized teeth probably reflected a diet like that of modern humans. In addition, H. naledi had limb proportions just like ours and there is no apparent reason why it could not have used stone tools.

“It doesn’t look like they’re in a different ecological niche. That’s weird; it’s a problem. This is not a situation where we can point to them and say: ‘They co-existed because they’re using resources differently’,” Prof Hawks told BBC News.

The researchers say that finding the remains of multiple individuals in a separate chamber bolsters the idea that Homo naledi was caching its dead. If correct, this surprising – and controversial claim – hints at an intelligent mind and, perhaps, the stirrings of culture.

By dating the site, researchers have sought to clear up some of the puzzles surrounding the remains.

In 2015, Prof Berger told BBC News that the remains could be up to three million years old based on their primitive characteristics. Yet the bones are only lightly mineralised, which raised the possibility that they might not be very ancient (although this is not always an accurate guide).

In order to arrive at an age, the team dated the bones themselves, sediments on the cave floor and flowstones – carbonate minerals formed when water runs down the wall or along the floor of a cave.

Several techniques were used: optically stimulated luminescence to date the cave sediments, uranium-thorium dating and palaeomagnetic analyses for the flowstones and combined U-series and electron spin resonance (US-ESR) for dating three naledi teeth.

By combining results together, they were able to constrain the age of the Homo naledi remains to between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago.

“We’ve got a geological bracket based on flowstones overlying the fossils and we’ve had direct dates on the teeth themselves,” said John Hawks.

The team sent samples to two separate labs to perform their analyses “blind”. This meant that neither lab knew what the other was doing, or what their analytical approaches were. Despite this, they returned the same results.

“This is now the best dated site in southern Africa – we threw everything at it,” said John Hawks.

Many mysteries remain about this intriguing member of the human family tree. Not least of them is H. naledi’s evolutionary history up until the point the remains show up in the Rising Star cave system.

Researchers currently envisage two possibilities. The first is that H. naledi represents one one of these earliest branches of Homo – perhaps something like Homo habilis. It retains a rather primitive anatomy while evolving in parallel with the branch of the human family tree that eventually results in modern humans.

The other possibility is that it diverged more than a million years ago from a more advanced form of Homo – perhaps Homo erectus – and then reverted to a more primitive form in some aspects of its skull and teeth.

Source:BBC

May 9, 2017
Uganda:Patient commits suicide over being accused of bringing misfortune, bad luck

{A man in Otwal Sub-county, Oyam District, has committed suicide due to stigma of his chronic illness.}

Mr Patrick Odongo, a resident of Acan-ling village in Anyomolyec parish, who had been suffering from epilepsy for several years, hanged self on Monday morning.

The officer in charge (OC) of Otwal Police Station, Mr Robert Okello, said before the incident the deceased reportedly bought a rope from a nearby trading centre and informed his wife, Ms Scovia Odongo, that the rope looked very good for hanging someone.

Mr Odongo, who appeared over excited, then explained to his wife how he had all along been suffering from abusive words hurled at him by his friends at drinking joints.

For instance, he reportedly told his wife how his friends were threatening to beat him up if he ever experienced convulsion again because they claim he was responsible for their misfortune.

Mr Odongo’s wife reportedly pleaded with him not to commit suicide when he threatened to do so, assuring him of his importance to the family and in the end getting temporary success in dissuading Odongo from committing suicide as he put away the rope and headed out later to drink.

“At the drinking joint, he was very happy and seemed to enjoy every moment with colleagues. He returned home at around 10pm,” the LC1 chairman of Acan-ling village, Mr Tom Okello, said.
While at his home, the deceased reportedly reassured his wife that he had abandoned his earlier plan of ending his life because of stigma and was even very “happy” before they retired to sleep.

However, at around midnight, Ms Odongo woke up and found her husband missing, prompting her to make an alarm which drew the attention of the couple’s neighbors, soon a search ensued.
Mr Odongo was later found dangling alive on a tree near his home but died moments later after he was disentangled from the rope.
The deceased left behind one wife and four children.

“I put the blame on the relatives, especially his wife for not alerting the police in time because the deceased had already informed her that he was planning to commit suicide,” Mr Okello said.

Depression and suicide tendencies are common in chronic diseases, especially epilepsy and diabetes, according to US National Library of Medicine. Suicide is one of the most important causes of death, and is usually underestimated.

Source:Daily Monitor

May 9, 2017
Shabaab car bomb attack kills six in Mogadishu

{At least six people were killed and about 10 injured Monday in a car bomb attack in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu claimed by militant Islamist group Shabaab, police said.}

The car exploded next to an Italian cafe on a key thoroughfare in the centre of the city which leads to the presidential palace, in the latest such attack in the violence-scarred country.

“For the moment we have six dead in the explosion, civilians. The car full of explosives blew up next to an Italian cafe,” said police officer Mohamed Abdulahi who was at the scene.

“The blast was very powerful and there were a lot of people there at the time, I saw several people dead and injured,” added a witness, Abdukadir Ise.

It was unclear whether the car was parked or if a suicide bomber was at the wheel when it exploded, according to police sources.

Shabaab claimed responsibility in a statement on a website it habitually uses. The group added that an officer was among the fatalities — which could not be immediately confirmed.

“Shabaab fighters were behind a car bomb attack on members of the security forces, the army and immigration services”, who regularly frequent the cafe, the group said.

In February Shabaab threatened to escalate attacks in a “vicious war” against the new government of President Mohamed Abdullahi.

For the last decade the Shabaab has been fighting to overthrow the internationally backed government of Somalia.

The group attacks government, military and civilian targets in the capital and elsewhere, often deploying suicide bombers, and has overrun several military outposts, massacring soldiers from the 22,000-member African Union Mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM.

It has also carried out terrorist attacks abroad including in the Ugandan capital Kampala in 2010 and the 2013 Westgate mall and 2015 Garissa University attacks, both in Kenya.

Source:AFP

May 9, 2017
Pressure on Shekau, Buhari’s health led to Chibok girls’ release

{Military pressure, in-fighting within Boko Haram and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s health combined to secure the release of 82 kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls, sources said Monday.}

The latest batch of the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted in April 2014 were freed Saturday in a prisoner swap for three senior jihadist commanders, all of them Chadian nationals.

A source with contacts among the Islamist militants under leader Abubakar Shekau said the students were handed over in a forest to the northeast of the town of Banki, on the border with Cameroon, after months of talks.

“Shekau kept unnecessarily dragging the negotiations to gain more leverage,” the source, who has previously provided regular, reliable information on the jihadists, told AFP.

But he was forced to accept terms after air strikes on his men in Balla village, on the edge of Sambisa Forest in Borno state, last month.

Several of his senior commanders were killed in the April 28 attack and Shekau himself was said to have been injured, although he later denied it.

“The reason why the aerial bombing in Balla forced him to seal the deal was he had lost many commanders and badly needed replacements,” the source said.

Shekau then gave the green light to his negotiator, a Cameroon national stationed in a village on the other side of the border, to agree to the girls’ release, he added.

Nigeria’s government has refused to comment publicly on the prisoner swap deal and it is not clear whether any ransom was paid, making it difficult to assess how Shekau will benefit.

Talks are already said to have started for the release of some or all of the 113 girls still being held in what would be a boost for Buhari and his government if successful.

A security source involved in the negotiations said the talks took place over six weeks and involved an almost daily “back and forth” between the two sides.

“Boko Haram wanted money not the release of prisoners. For me, the release (of the girls) was more to do with the state of Buhari’s health than Boko Haram pressure,” he added.

Buhari, a former military ruler, was elected on a promise to defeat Boko Haram and has been seen as giving impetus to the counter-insurgency. But there has been mounting concern about the 74-year-old’s health after he spent nearly two months undergoing treatment in London and made few public appearances since March.

On Sunday evening, he looked painfully thin when he met the 82 girls in Abuja then immediately flew to the British capital for another round of treatment for an undisclosed illness.

The source with contacts in Boko Haram said Shekau had became increasingly suspicious that some of his fighters were compromising their positions after the Balla bombing.

He has even admitted to executing commanders he suspected of planning to switch sides to a rival faction, including his one-time ally Mustapha Chad and the group’s spokesman Abu Zinnira.

A senior military officer confirmed they were increasingly monitoring the jihadists, whose insurgency has killed at least 20,000 since 2009, and had improved “infiltration methods”.

“We foiled attempts to attack multiple locations in the past week, including Maiduguri, Konduga, Kumshe and Bama (all in Borno state), based on intelligence reports,” he added.

On Friday, troops repelled an attack on Guduf village outside Boko Haram’s former stronghold of Gwoza.

On Saturday, soldiers foiled a raid in Dar village, in the Madagali district of neighbouring Adamawa state, he said.

Last August, the Islamic State group said the son of Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf, Abu Mus’ab Al-Barnawi, was the new leader of its “West Africa province”.

Shekau, who pledged allegiance to IS in March 2015, has maintained he was still in charge.

Mamman Nur, Shekau’s former comrade and the mastermind of the August 2011 UN bombing in Abuja, is believed to be the one calling the shots in the Barnawi faction.

The two sides have clashed, including on April 11 in Talala village, in the southeast of Borno state, over ownership of an arms dump in which 33 fighters were killed.

Nur, who was a close ally of Mohammed Yusuf and seen as having links with Al-Qaeda affiliates in north Africa, is said to be gradually winning over Shekau’s lieutenants and foot soldiers.

“He has put Shekau in a tight corner because his men are better trained and organised,” said the head of the fishermen’s union in Borno state, Abubakar Gamandi.

“Nur’s men almost always subdue Shekau fighters in battle.”

Last week a large number of Shekau’s fighters switched sides and arrived at Barnawi’s headquarters at Tumbun Gini around Lake Chad, said Gamandi, who has a network of contacts in the region.

Source:AFP

May 9, 2017
Kenya:Lawmakers split on Uhuru move to lower food prices

{President Uhuru Kenyatta’s announcement that a supplementary budget will be presented to Parliament as it resumes today to address the cost of living has been received mixed reactions from leaders.}

On Sunday, State House Spokesperson Manoah Esipisu said the President was concerned about the rising cost of essential commodities.

“The President has settled on fresh measures through a supplementary budget to address the situation,” Mr Esipisu said.

Mr Esipisu, who was addressing the media at State House, Nairobi, said Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich was finalising the details of the supplementary budget before it is taken to Parliament.

Yesterday, Kiharu MP Irungu Kang’ata said the decision to introduce the supplementary budget is good but a long-term solution needed to be devised.

“Long term measures are needed such as completion of irrigation projects,” Mr Kang’ata said.

He went on: “It is true there is inflation partly due to demand and supply issues. On demand side, during campaigns there is usually heightened money circulation which creates huge demand hence increase in prices. So one ought not to blame Jubilee for it.” Mr Kang’ata added.

He also blamed drought for reduced supply in key commodities. “The answer should be as per proposal contained in the supplementary budget cushioning the poor against inflation,” he said.

Ugunja MP Opiyo Wandayi said the introduction of the supplementary budget had come too late and could just be a scheme by the government to hoodwink Kenyans that it is doing something.

“The President is talking about the high cost of living as if he has been living outside this country, this only means that he is not in touch with the reality Kenyans are facing,” Mr Wandayi told Nation.

He went on: “The introduction of the supplementary budget cannot work because the revenue base of the country is too weak to support it.”

Uriri MP John K’Obado also faulted the decision, saying it could be another scam by the Jubilee administration in the offing.

“We know it is campaign time and anything is possible at this time. Money can be allocated to cushion Kenyans then later it ends up in other people’s pocket,” Mr K’Obado said.

Source:Daily Nation

May 9, 2017