Kenyan lawmakers impeach deputy president for abuse of office

IMPORTANT NOTICE: An external source produced this story. Sources provide us with insights and are an excellent resource for finding the truth and revealing community attitudes and opinions about events. Following this link opens a new browser tab and sends you to a website outside of Africa News Matters. We bear no responsibility for the link and its contents. https://www.voanews.com/a/kenyan-lawmakers-impeach-deputy-president-for-abuse-of-office/7816273.html

Nairo­bi — Kenya’s Nation­al Assem­bly has impeached the coun­try’s deputy pres­i­dent over accu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion and abuse of office. Law­mak­ers vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to remove Rigathi Gach­agua from office in the vote Tues­day night. The fate of the deputy pres­i­dent now rests in the hands of the Senate. 

The process to con­sid­er removal of Kenya’s deputy pres­i­dent from office moved to the Sen­ate Wednes­day after par­lia­men­tar­i­ans approved a motion to do so Tues­day night.

Ahead of the vote, embat­tled deputy pres­i­dent Rigathi Gach­agua and his allies pre­sent­ed his defense to the Nation­al Assem­bly for more than 90 minutes.

But the law­mak­ers were not swayed, and 281 of them approved a motion to remove Gach­agua from office. Forty-four oth­ers vot­ed against the motion, and one abstained.

Gach­agua was accused of acquir­ing prop­er­ties through cor­rupt means, though he argued the assets belonged to his late broth­er.  He is also accused of prac­tic­ing eth­nic pol­i­tics and act­ing to under­mine the government.

The impeach­ment comes after Gach­agua’s fell out with Pres­i­dent William Ruto.

The deputy pres­i­dent has denied all the alle­ga­tions against him, call­ing them out­ra­geous and say­ing they are pro­pa­gan­da meant to tar­nish his name.

Polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Mar­tin Andati said the way in which Gach­agua works with oth­er politi­cians and the peo­ple cost him his job.

“His fate is sealed. He antag­o­nized the MPs, he antag­o­nized the Sen­ate by talk­ing bad­ly about the cham­bers and the speak­ers, and gen­er­al­ly, he is not a pro-peo­ple per­son. He has poor peo­ple man­age­ment skills,” he said.

Some mem­bers of par­lia­ment, like Robert Mbui, who is also deputy leader of the minor­i­ty, were against the impeach­ment. He said the house should con­cen­trate on pub­lic issues instead of debat­ing one man.

“The cost of liv­ing has gone too high, peo­ple have no jobs, Mr. Speak­er. Those are the things that this house should pas­sion­ate­ly deal with, but for a whole day, even the last two or three weeks to deal with one mat­ter, I think we are los­ing direc­tion. It’s impor­tant that we deal with things that are affect­ing our peo­ple,” he said.

In the past four months, Kenya has wit­nessed a wave of protests aimed at Pres­i­dent Ruto’s gov­ern­ment over alle­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion by some politi­cians and gov­ern­ment offi­cers. Kenyans also protest­ed high tax­es and parliament’s alleged fail­ure to act inde­pen­dent­ly from the president.

Some politi­cians have accused the deputy pres­i­dent of help­ing to orga­nize anti-gov­ern­ment protests, an accu­sa­tion Gach­agua denies.

Kenyan polit­i­cal expert Har­man Many­o­ra said the par­lia­ment is set­ting a dan­ger­ous prece­dent that threat­ens the coun­try’s polit­i­cal future and eth­nic cohesion.

“[It] should not sur­prise us. In the future, we can have gov­ern­ments fall in the man­ner in which gov­ern­ments come and go in par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cies like India, Israel, the UK, and Italy, which I doubt we can with­stand. From a polit­i­cal front, this is also a coun­try with a lot of flash­points. It is an eth­ni­cal­ly charged coun­try, and a move like this has the poten­tial of neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing the coun­try by caus­ing divi­sion, and you can nev­er know where it can lead us,” said Manyora.

The debate and vot­ing about Gachagua’s con­duct will con­tin­ue next week. After that, some believe the issue may go to court, where he could seek legal help to either keep his job or clear his name of the alle­ga­tions against him.