Kenya impeaches deputy president over ‘corruption, undermining government’

Rigathi Gachagua, who has fallen out with President Ruto, was too ill to attend proceedings, his lawyers said.

The Kenyan Senate has voted to impeach Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua in a historic decision.

The upper house voted on Thursday to remove the 59-year-old on five out of a total of 11 charges against him, following two days of hearings. The Senate only needed to find him guilty of one charge to remove him from office.

Gachagua is the first deputy president to be removed in this manner since the introduction of impeachment in Kenya’s 2010 constitution. A similar motion was overwhelmingly passed by the lower house, the National Assembly, last week.

Earlier in the day, Senate proceedings were disrupted after Gachagua was admitted to the hospital with severe chest pains, preventing him from testifying in his defense.

The 11 charges – which Gachagua has consistently denied – included corruption, insubordination, money laundering, undermining the government, practicing ethnically divisive politics, bullying public officers, and threatening a judge.

Last-minute illness

Despite Gachagua’s absence due to illness, the Senate proceeded with the vote. His lawyer, Paul Muite, said the deputy president had been hospitalized with intense chest pains, urging the Senate to postpone the vote for a few days.

“The sad reality is that the Deputy President of the Republic of Kenya has fallen very ill,” Muite said.

Speaker Amason Kingi proposed a motion to adjourn the hearing until Saturday, but senators voted against it.

“The nays have it,” Kingi declared, as Gachagua’s legal team left the chambers in protest.

President Ruto, who has distanced himself from Gachagua in recent months, has not commented on the proceedings.

Many Kenyans view the impeachment process as politically motivated and a distraction from the aftermath of the deadly anti-tax protests in June and July, which revealed widespread discontent with government policies and alleged corruption.

The hearings, which scrutinized Gachagua’s finances in detail, may have political consequences for President Ruto, according to Karuti Kanyinga, a professor at the University of Nairobi’s Institute for Development Studies.

“We are likely to see people calling for the same scrutiny of the president,” Kanyinga said.

Gachagua has previously described the impeachment process as a political lynching based on falsehoods.

Credit: Aljazeera