President Ruto may be jailed in future for what he's doing today – Omtatah

Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah has cautioned President William Ruto to be wary of how he runs the country lest he finds himself on the wrong side of the law after the conclusion of his term.

Omtatah, who spoke on Citizen TV’s ‘The Big Conversation’ show on Wednesday night, warned the President to desist from attempting to implement policies that are contrary to the Constitution.

According to the lawmaker, the Head of State’s persistent ignorance of the country’s guiding legal document in the execution of government affairs may eventually serve to put him behind bars when he leaves power.

He went ahead to advise President Ruto to consider the number of ex-presidents jailed in South Korea, where he presently is on an official visit, due to what he termed as going “rogue” during their time in office.

“We have a Constitution in this country, and within that Constitution there are measures to punish these people (the government). There’s going to come a time when we shall put them in jail for what they’e doing today,” said Omtatah.

“President Ruto is in South Korea, let him ask himself how many former presidents of South Korea have gone to jail. As he wants to admire South Korea, he must also there’s a side where rogue presidents are jailed and punished. So does President Ruto want to be jailed when he leaves office? That’s the question he should ask himself. He must obey the Constitution, there’s no way out.”

The Senator went on to term the ongoing Finance Bill, 2024 debate as a diversionary tactic by the government to prevent Kenyans from focusing on the alleged looting going on and hidden in the budget.

According to Omtatah, Kenyans should at the moment treat the Finance Bill as non-issue, and instead direct their attention to what he termed as the “budget corruption” that is going to cost the country nearly Ksh.100 billion.

“In discussing this (Finance) Bill, I would like everybody to go to the website of the Treasury, you’ll find five books there that contain budget estimates of the current government, that we’re supposed to be discussing but instead we’re being taken the wrong way to discuss the Finance Bill which is premature; you cannot have a Finance Bill without a budget you want to finance,” he noted.

“It is about 4,500 pages, I’ve read through all of them, and on my first reading, I’ve identified about Ksh.100 billion that is being stolen in two items. One of them is on the repayment of debt, there’s about Ksh.40 billion there that you cannot explain, double repayment.”

He added: “When you come down, there are other things they call ‘other expenses.’ The law requires that every item that are going to be identified. So you cannot have ‘other expenses,’ you must tell us this Ksh.10 is going to buy a glass. So ‘other expenses’ is what we call budgeted corruption. And that ‘other expenses’ has been allocated Ksh.52 billion…that’s a total of Ksh.92 billion.”