A section of members of the county assembly have opposed calls for governors to be appointed instead of being elected. They said such a move will take away the accountability that elected governors have to their constituents in the current arrangement. Kiambu Senator Kimani Wamatangi introduced a debate on whether governors should be appointed instead of being elected by the people, saying that the position is ‘managerial’ hence need vetting and leadership skills that he argued politicians may not have. Speaking to our reporter, Kisumu County majority leader Samuel Ong’ow and his Kakamega counterpart Robert Makhanu said that making the posts of governors appointive will take the country back to the older regime of a centralised government. As long as Kenyans want devolution to succeed, then the position of governors must remain elective, Makahanu said. “We cannot have a governor that is appointed by the national government to lead a county and still expect them to be accountable to elected MCAs there,” he said. Ong’ow said that a governor must be both a manager and a politician. “Managing a county needs both managerial and political skills. You cannot choose someone as a governor just because they did well in their managerial jobs. Running a county is a whole lot more complicated than running a company,” he said.

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