Kenya lawmakers vote to impeach Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua | Politics News | The Round Table Lawmakers in Kenya have elected to accuse Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua for abuse of office.
The impeachment motion on Tuesday charged the 59-year-old deputy to President William Ruto of corruption, insubordination, undermining the government and practising ethnically divisive politics, among an organise of other charges.
“According to the results … of the motion that I’ve impartial declared, a total of 281 members being more than two-thirds of the members of the National Assembly have elected in advocate of the motion,” Parliament Speaker Moses Wetang’ula said.
There were 44 chooses against and one abstention, according to Wetangula.
Kimani Ichung’wah, parliament’s majority leader, stated the deputy president had “violated not one, but eight provisions of our constitution”.
Gachagua has rejected all the charges.
On Tuesday evening, he inspired lawmakers to “search your conscience” before voting.
“If you search your conscience and listen to the issues that have been deepened and you unearth that there are no grounds to incriminate the deputy president of Kenya, please make the right decision.”
He declared his innocence, offering a detailed denial of the allegations, which contain amassing an enormous unexplained property portfolio, and canvassing “ethnic Balkanisation”.
“I will fight to the end,” he announced to a news conference on the eve of the impeachment proceedings.
The impeachment motion will now proceed to the upper house Senate and if agreed there, Gachagua would become the first deputy president to be removed from office in this way since impeachment was introduced in Kenya’s revised 2010 constitution.
The upper house Senate must sit within a week of receiving the impeachment and will then have 10 days to deal with the motion, including allowing Gachagua to cross-examine the evidence.
It will want the back of at least two-thirds of senators to pass.
The impeachment can however be appealed through the courts.
Gachagua has filed a court petition to halt the proceedings, which were initiated by Ruto’s coalition allies latest week.
He championed Ruto in his 2022 election triumph and assisted attain a huge hinder of elects from the populous central Kenya region. But in recent months, Gachagua has spoken of being sidelined, amid widespread discloses in local media that he has fallen out with Ruto as political alliances have shifted.
Ruto refused most of his cabinet and brought in members of the main opposition consequent nationwide censures against unpopular tax increases in June and July in which more than 50 people were killed.
While Ruto has not yet commented publicly on the impeachment proceedings, Gachagua outraged many in Ruto’s coalition for likening the government to a company, and proposing that those who chose for the coalition had first purport on public sector jobs and development projects.
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Regards to Al Jazeera
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Published 10/9/2024