By Edna-UCLIQ
Imenti Central MP Moses Kirima has dismissed reports that the legislator from the Meru region voted to impeach the Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua based on President William Ruto’s orders.
Gachagua was impeached last week Tuesday by an overwhelming majority of the National Assembly after 281 MPs voted to send him home against 44 who opposed his ouster.
At least 40 Mt Kenya MPs were among those who voted in support of the proposed removal from office of the DP on the strength of 11 grounds cited in the motion sponsored by Kibwezi West MP Mwengi Mutuse.
Speaking to the press on Monday, Kirima said he was among the lot that endorsed Gachagua’s ouster, but this was purely on their individual conscience and not on the President’s directive.
I want to insist, and that one should be repeated; there’s no time when William Ruto called us and told us to impeach Gachagua. It was the charges which were read in Parliament,” he said.
“But I have seen it that you people [the media] are trying to coin it and make it that it’s William Ruto who told us, he did not,” he added.
Kirima said that MPs from Meru region supported the proposed ouster of Gachagua on the strong conviction that Interior CS Kithure Kindiki would replace him.
Kindiki and Gachagua had topped the running mate race in May 2022, but despite the latter emerging top after two rounds of voting, Ruto settled on Gachagua, then a first term Mathira MP.
This, he said, was the assumption of the Ameru MPs: since Gachagua was out of the way, it would automatically mean that Kindiki would ascend to the position of second-in-command.
We believed as Meru MPs that No. 2 is supposed to take that place of No. 1, so we signed on the strength that Kindiki is going to be appointed as DP. If it was not Kindiki, I would not have voted out Gachagua,.
However, the MP did appear to raise concern that things seem to be changing rather fast and insinuated that the initial plan may not come to pass.
“But from the time we passed that impeachment, things are not as they were,” Kirima said.
Gachagua has been given 10 hours within which to make his case and defend himself against all the 11 grounds leveled against him by his accuser, when the Senate holds a two-day hearing session on Thursday and Friday.
The Senate has equally granted the sponsor of the impeachment motion, Kibwezi West MP Mwengi Mutuse, and the National Assembly an equal amount of time.
