Unending saga: Spotlight turns on Speaker, Clerk after Wambora acquital

Embu, Kenya: If there is a governor who, quite arguably, has never enjoyed his time in office, then it is Embu’s Martin Nyaga Wambora. Faced with a hostile County Assembly, Wambora has literally spent almost his entire first year in office fighting for political survival.

It is a struggle that has made him a regular face in the corridors of justice, shuttling between courts in Embu, Kerugoya, Nyeri and Nairobi seeking to overturn his sacking by Members of the County Assembly (MCAs). The Embu County Aseembly has impeached Wambora twice.

The governor can now heave a sigh of relief after the Court of Appeal, sitting in Nyeri, brought his predicaments to a close ? at least for now.

The court cleared Wambora of any wrong-doing in relation to his first impeachment, thus upholding April’s decision by the Kerugoya High Court.

But the Nyeri court may have also re-ignited the turf wars between Wambora and the county assembly by ordering the immediate resumption of the contempt of court trial against Embu Speaker Justus Kariuki Mate and County Assembly Clerk Jim Kauma.

Senior Counsel Paul Muite, while arguing Wambora’s case, insisted that Mate and Kauma should take responsibility for their blatant disobedience. The appellate judges found that Mate and Kauma blatantly violated a court order barring them from debating Wambora’s impeachment despite having been served.

“A disobedience of a court order should be treated as a funeral, with compassion for the death of the rule of law,” the judges ruled.

Already, the High Court in Kerugoya, which was handling the contempt case before it was halted by the appellate court, had already ruled that Mate and Kauma had a case to answer. Thus as the two leaders stand on the dock in Kerugoya tomorrow as directed by the appellate judges, they will be staring at a possible imprisonment.

Besieged governor

Mate and Kauma had been adamant that the said court order was served to the secretary and legal clerk of the county assembly and that they never saw it by the time of commencing the debate.

Wambora’s legal team’s have also put up spirited efforts to rescue the besieged governor from his second impeachment, whose petition is still pending at the  High Court in Nairobi.

His lawyers now hope that the ruling by the Court of Appeal in Nyeri will set a precedent to be followed by the High Court in Nairobi.

“This case will have serious implications on the one in Nairobi because the charges leveled against Wambora are the same ones he has been cleared of here,” said a member of the legal team.

Wambora’s supporters broke into song and dance when appellate judges Alnashir Visram, Martha Koome and Otieno Odek ruled that Wambora could go on with his duties without hindrance.

The judges ruled that the governor ought not to have been sacked because he had no direct connection to the allegations of corruption the MCAs had accused him of.

Wambora’s woes date back to last year, when the Embu County Government sought the services of contractors to renovate the Embu County Stadium and advertised tenders for the supply and distribution of maize seeds to farmers.

But the County Assembly was dissatisfied with the manner in which the stadium was refurbished and the type and quality of seeds supplied.

On January 3, the county assembly summoned County Secretary Lorna Kariuki before the joint committee on Sports and Agriculture to answer queries over the stadium and the poor quality maize seeds.

She never turned up and an impeachment motion against Wambora was tabled on January 16. The assembly’s overwhelming recommendation to send him packing were upheld by the Senate later.

He was, however, reinstated by the High Court in Kerugoya on April 16, before the county assembly re-enacted the script to send him packing once more on April 28.

Gross violations

But the Court of Appeal has now given the besieged governor a political lifeline, ruling that he was “not personally responsible” for the alleged gross violations which squarely ought to have been placed on the county secretary.

“Collective responsibility would imply that all individual members of the various organs of the county government would be personally responsible for acts or omissions of any person in the employment of the county government,” the judges ruled.

This meant that the impeachment motion tabled against Wambora was irregular since there was no direct links between the county secretaries’ alleged misconduct and the governor. Interestingly, Wambora’s second impeachment was premised on the same issues of the stadium facelift and the purchase of maize seeds.

Asked whether this would jeopardise the operations of his government, Wambora said: “I don’t want to get into that. What we need most is the unity of Embu people.”