The Mvita MP said he would prefer to be sacked from the government and voluntarily leave ODM if he felt the party had finally lost touch with the electorate. “I am not going to resign. If you want, fire me but justify that I deserved to be fired,” Mr Balala said. “Have I misbehaved? Not performed as a minister?” he posed.

Mr Balala spoke at a press conference on Thursday at the Blue Bay Beach Resort hotel, some 45 kilometers from Zanzibar town. The minister was on vacation at the exotic facility owned by Andrew Smith, a Kenyan-Briton investor.

Successes

The press conference was organised by the Zanzibar Association of Tourism Investors and the minister spoke on the successes and challenges facing the tourism sector in the East African region. He had been asked to respond to fears that Kenya could become politically unstable due to the feud between Mr Odinga and the camp led by Agriculture minister William Ruto.

Mr Balala however said that the existing differences in ODM was not likely to lead to the kind of violence that followed the 2007 elections.

But the minister said ODM could lose favour with the public if its leadership did not act to embrace divergent views and shed what he termed “baba na mama” syndrome.

“It is shocking that a fellow Cabinet minister can stand up in public and dare us to resign simply because they seem not ready to tolerate those holding views different to those of the party leader,” Mr Balala said.

The Mvita MP said ODM should have strong and independent internal mechanisms to address the concerns of all its leaders and members.

“No one has come to find out what my grievances are but the whole party machinery has been unleashed on me,” he said.

COPENHAGEN, Saturday

Danish police said on Saturday they shot and wounded a Somali man with al Qaeda links when he tried to break into the home of a cartoonist whose 2005 caricatures of Prophet Mohammad sparked global Muslim outrage.

The 28-year-old man, armed with a knife and axe, failed to get into Kurt Westergaard’s home in the town of Aarhus late on Friday and was shot in the leg and hand after he threw the axe at a policeman, a police spokesman said.

Under arrest

The man, now under arrest, had “close ties to the Somali terror organisation al-Shabaab as well as to al-Qaeda leaders in East Africa,” the Danish Security and Intelligence Service PET said in a statement. The man, who had a legal residence permit for Denmark, was also “suspected of being involved in terror-related activities in East Africa,” it said.

The security service said the man, who would be charged with attempting to kill Westergaard and the police officer, had been involved in a “terror-related network” that had long been under investigation in connection with threats to Westergaard.

“PET looks very seriously upon this case which once again confirms the terror threat directed against Denmark and the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in particular,” PET chief Jakob Scharf said in the statement. Westergaard, 74, who depicted Prophet Mohammad with a bomb in his turban, was not hurt in the incident, a police spokesman said.

He said police were investigating whether the Somali man acted alone in the attempted attack at Westergaard’s home, which is widely reported to be under tight security.

Last year, US authorities arrested two men in Chicago who were suspected of planning attacks on Westergaard and his newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published the caricatures of Prophet Mohammed. Most Muslims consider any depiction of the founder of Islam as offensive, and when other newspapers reprinted the caricatures in 2006 it triggered violence in a number of countries.

Kenya will be hosting the 56th meeting of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in September this year.

The meeting brings together Speakers and presiding officers (clerks) of the Commonwealth parliaments as well as delegations of MPs from the 54 states.

Speaker of the National Assembly Kenneth Marende is the president of the CPA. Mr Marende left the country for a CPA meeting in New Dehli, India on Saturday night. The meeting is to discuss management of Parliaments.

Mr Marende and Clerk Patrick Gichohi, will be attending the 20th CPA Conference of speakers and clerks, which will among other issues discuss the role of the speaker as a mediator.

The conference will also discuss the role of the speaker in the administration of Parliament, ensuring security in the precincts of Parliament and the use of technology.

It will also brainstorm on how speakers and clerks can maintain, promote and encourage impartiality and fairness in Parliament.

Among the key participants at the conference is House of Commons Speaker John Bercow, who recently took over the reins in London following the departure of Michael Martin, who quit amidst the row over MPs’ expenses scandal.