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 oust Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua in a historic impeachment vote.

The upper house has so far voted on Thursday to impeach the 59-year-old on five charges out of a total of 11 against him, following two days of hearings.

The Senate only had to find him guilty of one charge to remove him from office.

He is the first deputy president to be removed in this manner since impeachment was introduced in Kenya’s revised 2010 constitution.

A similar motion against President William Ruto’s number two was overwhelmingly approved by the lower house National Assembly last week.

The Senate session had plunged into disarray earlier Thursday after Gachagua was admitted to hospital with severe chest pains and failed to testify in his defence.

The 11 charges – which Gachagua had vigorously denied – included corruption, insubordination, money-laundering, undermining the government, practising ethnically divisive politics, bullying public officers and threatening a judge.

Last-minute illness

The Senate proceeded with the vote despite Gachagua’s absence from proceedings as a result of illness.

He was due to defend himself against the allegations, which he denies, after allies of President Ruto said he was disloyal.

But after Gachagua failed to appear, his lawyer Paul Muite said the deputy president had been hospitalised with intense chest pains, urging the Senate to pause proceedings for a couple of days.

“The sad reality is that the deputy president of the republic of Kenya has been taken sick, very sick,” Muite said.

Speaker Amason Kingi put forward a motion to adjourn the hearing until Saturday but senators voted against the move.

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

Ruto, who has fallen out with Gachagua in recent months, has not commented on 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 that exposed deep discontent with government policies and alleged corruption.

The hearings, which have involved in-depth scrutiny of Gachagua’s finances, could boomerang back at Ruto, according to Karuti Kanyinga, a professor at the University of Nairobi’s Institute for Development Studies.

“We are going to hear people demanding that the same thing that has been done to Gachagua be done to the president,” Kanyinga said.

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