Nairobi – The Senate has rejected Murang’a County Assembly’s decision to impeach Governor Mwangi Wa Iria.
The County Assembly had accused the governor of gross violation of Constitution, Crimes under national law and gross misconduct including accountability in management of finances leading the county to incur huge debt.
“The committee through its thorough investigations after hearing from the witnesses established that these allegations could not be proved and therefore could not be substantiated,” said Musila.
Musila while presenting the report before the floor of Senate said allegations that the governor paid salaries to over 80 ghost county workers could not be substantiated.
“Although allegations by the County Assembly linking the governor to have breached provisions of the constitution and public finance management, the committee found out that the allegations could not be substantiated, therefore the committee agreed that Murang’a governor could not be impeached,” declared Musila.
The MCAs and lawyers witnessing against the governor pleaded with the Senate to impeach Wa Iria to serve as a lesson to governors contravening the Constitution and engaging in financial malpractices hampering realization of devolution.
“We have not come here (Senate) to make any judgment against the governor but to help Murang’a people and the entire nation for this child called devolution to work well through proper management of allocated finances,” pleaded the Murang’a County Assembly defense lawyer, Mbuthi Gethenji.
He asked Senate to impeach Wa Iria on grounds that submissions by the governor’s lawyers had unsubstantiated evidence to defeat contravened constitutional grounds cited by the MCAs.
“We ask the Senate to uphold the Murang’a County Assembly’s impeachment motion because the governor is not prepared to serve the residents provided by the Constitution. The Senate should also do amendments to lower the threshold required in impeaching the governor to ensure enhance accountability,” said Gethenji.
However, the Governors’ three lawyers argued that their client was not given chance by the County Assembly to defend himself as required by law before moving on with the impeachment motion.
“Grounds cited by the MCAs to have the governor impeached does not meet the constitutional threshold. We ask the Senate to overthrow the impeachment motion because this will be helping counties grow by providing interventions on how things should be done well,” pleaded the governor’s county lawyer, Peter Kimani.
Kimani pointed out that for the last two weeks Murang’a County business has come to a standstill due to the MCAs move to impeach Wa Iria, yet the disputing parties could have resolved their differences amicably.
“The Senate in its interventions should encourage MCAs not to use ill-motive to impeach governors in this Republic and the threshold for impeaching a governor should be raised to make it difficult to oust governors for devolution to work,” said Kimani.
Wa Iria is the third governor to be impeached by the County Assembly after the Embu Governor Martin Wambora whose impeachment was approved by the Senate but reinstated by the High Court, and Kericho Governor Paul Chepkwony in June, 2015 where his impeachment was rejected by the Senate.
Iria told The Standard that he was feeling honoured after being cleared by the Senate special committee that was constituted to investigate him. He said he was ready to work with all the leaders for the sake of pushing Jubilee government development agenda geared towards attaining Vision 2030. The special committee of 11 senators was chaired by Kitui Senator David Musila. He described the two weeks since the impeachment process started as the most troubling, adding that the accusations leveled against him were political and lacked facts. "It is an honour to Murang'a people after the Senate absolved me of the accusations that prompted the county assembly to launch process to impeach me," said the governor.
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