Githunguri MP Gathoni Wamuchomba has cautioned National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetangula against referring to her as ‘mamaa’.
Agitated Wamuchomba on Friday said such utterances from the Speaker diminish elected women in Parliament.
“I want to remind the speaker that any woman elected in the national assembly is not a mamaa, let him refer to us as honorable members,” she said.
The legislator spoke during a press conference where she vowed to press on with her campaign against stalled femicide investigations despite being suspended from the National Assembly for 20 days.
Wamuchomba on Friday expressed her disappointment at her fellow women legislators who jeered at her when she walked out of the Chambers in a protest targeting Interior CS Kipchumba Murkomen.
She said it was her lowest moment to see fellow women celebrating as she was ejected out of parliament.
“It defeated me to see women representatives and women in peace watch me as I was getting patronised by men, including the speaker himself, and they never defended me for standing for the rights of the women of Kenya,” she said.
The suspension came hours after she stormed out of Parliament on Wednesday, accusing Murkomen of giving ‘flimsy’ explanations over the escape of a prime suspect in the Kware Dumpsite murder probe.
The feud centred on the unresolved probe in the mysterious incident where 42 women were in 2024 murdered and their mutilated bodies dumped in the Kware site.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations has only so far identified 13 victims after 13 months.
“The CS Murukomen confirmed that after 13 months, the directorate of criminal investigation, that is the DCI, has only positively identified five out of 42 bodies,” she stated.
Wamuchomba alleged that since suspect Collin Jumaisi escaped custody on August 20, 2024, no further arrests have been made.
She accused security agencies of showing contempt for ‘femicide victims’ and the government of letting perpetrators ‘kill and traumatize families with impunity’.
“Since 2016, over 930 women have been murdered in Kenya, yet only 216 perpetrators have been prosecuted,” she said, warning her suspension was “an attempt to silence the anti-femicide movement.”
She also hit at Murkomen for dismissing BBC’s exposé on Kenya’s child sex trade as an ‘attack on Kenya’s image’, calling it proof of a systemic unwillingness to address threats to women and girls.
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“Senator Murukomen is inept… He cannot continue to serve as a minister in charge of the Interior if he cannot even defend the rights of the woman he has in his own house and the daughters he has given back to as a father,” she said.