Handle with care: Why Gachagua's removal risks dividing the nation

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.

The National Assembly began processing the much-anticipated impeachment of Deputy President (DP) Rigathi Gachagua Tuesday afternoon. By the time the motion was moved on the floor of the house by Kibwezi West legislator Mwengi Mutuse, a whopping 291 Members of Parliament (MPs), representing 83 per cent of all eligible voters, had appended their signatures to support the removal from office of the DP.

The huge number of MPs who supported the motion in principle indicates the feeling of the whole house that the DP has outlived his usefulness, if ever there was any at all.

The Standing Orders provide three grounds for removal from the office of a DP, namely, gross violation of the constitution, crime under local or international law, and gross misconduct. Hon Mutuse presented evidence of transgression, which justify the removal of the DP under each of the three broad grounds. The National Assembly Speaker, Moses Wetangula, expressed his satisfaction that the motion met the threshold for processing in readiness for debate.

One of the grounds that the National Assembly will consider as a basis for removal of the DP is that he is a very divisive figure. This accusation emanates from the DP’s penchant for publicly celebrating his Gikuyu heritage, while being grossly insensitive to other communities.

A case in point was when the DP publicly said that in the run-up to the August 2022 presidential poll, the Mt Kenya communities did not have any problems with President Uhuru Kenyatta except that he tried to impose on them his choice for successor, Raila Odinga, whom they hated. The DP was, in essence, referring to the decades-old political suspicion between the Gikuyu and Raila’s community, the Luo.

As a prominent Gikuyu leader, Gachagua should be at the forefront of building bridges across different communities and trying to create a cohesive society. Instead, the DP incessantly talks proudly about the unparalleled significance of his community in Kenya’s national life, something that has the potential to create inter-ethnic tensions in the country.

Sadly, the DP sees nothing wrong with his preoccupation with the promotion of the interests of one ethnic group in total disregard to all the other 44 distinct communities. Politicians of Gachagua’s ilk have a tendency to use their ethnicities as a shield against their wrong deeds.

Such politicians present themselves as fierce defenders of their ethnic communities, so that when they are called upon to account for their extraction of private benefits from public coffers, they shout at the top of their voices that their communities are under attack.

That is the way politicians cushion themselves against requirements for accountability in public offices. Fact is, selfish politicians do not care much about the injuries they cause to the society in terms of welfare losses arising from their rapacious activities.

In recent times, the DP has retreated to his Mt Kenya backyard from where he routinely issues thinly-veiled threats to President Ruto to touch him and face the wrath of the Gikuyu and their sidekicks, the Meru, Tharaka, Nithi and Embu.

These threats are coached in ethnic jingoism aimed at blackmailing the President that he is not grateful to Mt Kenya region that gave him the bulk of the votes that catapulted him to the presidency.

The fact is that the Kikuyu votes alone could not have made Ruto the president; many other communities voted for him. So, Gachagua has managed to intertwine his personal issues with those of Mt Kenya region.

Hence, the DP’s now familiar restraint “bora msiguze murima” (provided you don’t touch the mountain). The vast majority of the Gikuyu people now believe that by President Ruto’s allies trying to oust Gachagua from the Deputy Presidency, it is their community that is being vilified and persecuted. In fact, the Gikuyu have made it very clear that any MP from their community who dares sign the petition to remove Gachagua will not be re-elected in 2027.

That explains the loud silence of the Gikuyu legislators as the rest of the MPs gear up for the DP’s removal from the office. This is not a very good sign in a country that is heavily balkanised on the basis of tribe. For not-too-good historical reasons, the Gikuyu community has been perceived as perpetrators of ethnic bigotry, and therefore, easily becomes a target for hostility by other communities.

This hatred came to a tip-off point in 2007/2008 when the Mt Kenya communities were completely isolated by the rest of Kenya.

Due to the lack of genuine statesmen at the helm of the country’s leadership for several decades, not much attempt has been made to reconcile the country. As of now, the country is tinkering on the verge of an ethnically motivated rupture unless something is done urgently.

Gachagua’s impeachment process presents parliament with an opportunity to get hold of the dragon of ethnicity and slay it once and for all.

In this regard, the parliamentarians must lift the ethnic veil off DP’s face, and tell him that he is Gachagua and not the Gikuyu community; he must face whatever tribulations he is facing as an individual without running for protection within the ethnic cocoon.

Kenyans will be waiting with baited breath to see if MPs from the Mountain will have the moral courage to vote against the DP in principle. Likewise, it will be interesting to see non-Gikuyu MPs stand with Gachagua and urge their colleagues to spare the DP’s career.

In conclusion, it is important for Kenyans to appreciate that negative ethnicity goes against the natural state of things. Negative ethnicity is a primitive tool that politicians use for their own survival. Kenyans need to work together, and enjoy the benefits of synergy. Communities need one another to supplement their unique ways of understanding their worldviews.

When communities come together, they create superior ways of solving societal problems.

Professor Ongore teaches at the Technical University of Nairobi

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