(Bloomberg) -- Kenyan senators voted to impeach Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, upholding the National Assembly’s decision to oust him on charges of making inflammatory statements to stir ethnic hatred and undermining the judiciary.
The required two-thirds of Senators upheld five of the 11 charges that were leveled against Gachagua and agreed to remove him.
“The senate has resolved to remove from office by impeachment, His Excellency Rigathi Gachagua,” Speaker of Senate Amason Kingi said. “He ceases to hold office.”
Under Kenya’s constitution, President William Ruto is required to nominate a replacement, whose appointment will be subject to the National Assembly’s approval. While Ruto is unlikely to lose his grip on power, if Gachagua breaks away from the ruling alliance and teams up with other opposition leaders, it could weaken him and detract from his political and legislative agenda.
The shakeup comes in the wake of anti-government protests that were staged against planned tax increases and sparked clashes that claimed at least 60 lives. Ruto subsequently reshuffled his cabinet and brought in several opposition members in the face of objections from Gachagua and other members of the ruling alliance.
Gachagua, 59, denied any wrongdoing and called the impeachment process a political witch-hunt. He has vowed to fight his ouster in court, saying his rights to a fair hearing were violated and there was no meaningful public participation in the process to remove him.
Thursday’s Senate hearing was temporarily suspended as Gachagua’s lawyer requested a postponement, telling the chamber the deputy president was being treated in a hospital and wouldn’t be able to testify. Lawmakers voted to continue.
Ruto and Gachagua won the disputed 2022 elections on a joint ticket, narrowly beating five-time contender Raila Odinga. Their relationship has deteriorated sharply since July, when the president teamed up with Odinga to form a so-called government of national unity.
Gachagua’s impeachment may create uncertainty among investors and weigh on economic growth.
That’s something the east African nation can ill afford — it’s at high-risk of debt distress and been plagued by corruption, and the government has sought the help of the International Monetary Fund to help steady its finances. A decision to backtrack on some of the new taxes has left a $2.7 billion hole in the budget, forcing the Treasury to trim spending and increase borrowing.
While a more urban, educated and critical electorate has been reshaping Kenyan politics as witnessed in the June protests, ethnicity continues to play a role. About 1,200 people died in clashes between Ruto’s Kalenjin community and Gachagua’s Kikuyu people following a disputed vote in 2007, and there are fears that the removal of the deputy president could reignite tensions.
Ruto is likely to nominate his next deputy from the vote-rich Mt. Kenya region, where Gachagua hails from, in a bid to retain his support base, according to Andrew Smith, senior Africa analyst at risk firm Verisk Maplecroft.
Kenya’s deputy presidents “are initially selected largely on pragmatic grounds, as people who bring something useful to a political alliance,” Gabrielle Lynch, professor of comparative politics at the University of Warwick, said in a column on the Conversation website. “They’re not usually people with whom the president has a strong and continuous personal relationship or someone with whom they share a clear political ideology. Neither are they usually someone who has made their way up through a political party. This has brought about a long history of tensions and fallout between Kenya’s presidents and their deputies.”
--With assistance from Eric Ombok.
(Updates to add speaker comment in third paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected result of vote.)
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