President Ruto’s nemesis, Rigathi Gachagua, was too sick to attend the proceedings, according to his attorneys.
Kenyan senators attend the impeachment motion in which they decided to remove Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua from office inside the Parliament buildings in Nairobi, Kenya October 17, 2024. [Monicah Mwangi/Reuters]
In a historic impeachment vote, the Kenyan Senate decided to remove Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.After two days of hearings, the upper house has voted five times on Thursday to impeach the 59-year-old on five of the 11 charges brought against him.
He only needed to be found guilty of one charge by the Senate to be removed from office.Since the introduction of impeachment in Kenya’s 2010 revised constitution, he is the first deputy president to be removed in this fashion.The National Assembly, the lower house, last week overwhelmingly approved a similar motion against President William Ruto’s number two.
Following Gachagua’s hospital admission for severe chest pains and his refusal to testify in support of himself, the Senate session earlier on Thursday descended into chaos.
Gachagua had vehemently denied all 11 accusations, which included insubordination, corruption, money laundering, undermining the government, engaging in politically divisive ethnic politics, intimidating public servants, and threatening a judge.
An illness at the last minute
Despite Gachagua’s illness-related absence from proceedings, the Senate carried out the vote.He was supposed to respond to President Ruto’s allies’ accusations that he was disloyal, but he denies them.However, Gachagua’s attorney Paul Muite claimed that the deputy president had been hospitalised for severe chest pains after he failed to show up, pleading with the Senate to postpone the meeting for a few days.
Muite stated, “The unfortunate truth is that the deputy president of the Republic of Kenya has been taken ill, very ill.”Senators voted against Speaker Amason Kingi’s proposal to postpone the hearing until Saturday.Kingi remarked, “The nays have it,” as the legal team for Gachagua stormed out of the chambers.Ruto has not provided any commentary on the proceedings, despite his recent falling out with Gachagua.Many Kenyans believe that the impeachment process is politically driven and intended to divert attention from the fallout from the deadly anti-tax demonstrations in June and July, which revealed widespread dissatisfaction with public policies and allegations of corruption.
Ruto may face backlash from the hearings, which have involved a thorough examination of Gachagua’s finances, according to Karuti Kanyinga, an academic at the University of Nairobi’s Institute for Development Studies.”People are going to demand that the president be subjected to the same treatment as Gachagua,” Kanyinga stated.Gachagua has claimed in the past that the impeachment procedure is a politically motivated lynching based on lies.