Gachagua ouster raises important legal questions

This week’s impeachment of Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua in the National Assembly was a lesson in Kenyan political elites’ complete lack of seriousness.

There was a childish giddiness that betrayed their proclivity to major in minor things. The House was full to the brim, something that seldom happens when they are discussing matters with greater impact on Kenyans (like our failing education and health systems).

There was also the rank hypocrisy. Many accused Gachagua of corruption and crass tribalism, the very same acts that they and their co-conspirators outside the House are famous for. 

History will deem it fair and just that Gachagua was impeached by the National Assembly and (hopefully) convicted and removed from office by the Senate. His brand of political ethnicity was a step back many decades in our political development.

His nakedly transactional approach to public office gave life to the worst instincts among us. Our public sphere is better off with fewer, not more, of men and women like Gachagua. 

At the same time, there are a lot more Gachagua’s left in public life. None other than President William Ruto himself dabbles in the same approaches to political ethnicity and views public office in transactional terms.

This is why Kenyans must ask: what will change after we get rid of Gachagua?

Will this simply be a rejection of a man who proved to be difficult to work within a government that continues to fail at everything it touches while presiding over obscene levels of corruption?

Or will there be some introspection and turning of a new leaf in how public officials approach their sacred duty to Kenyans? 

The other set of questions out there revolve around the position of Deputy President. The framers of the Constitution gave the position of security of tenure as a check against the imperial presidency.

By orchestrating the impeachment of Gachagua, President Ruto is attacking an important check on his power.

It is as simple as that. It should trouble us that Gachagua’s impeachment process is moving swiftly through Parliament without a thought about the implications for checks and balances both within the presidency and about executive-legislative relations. 

We do not want to develop a culture of docile Deputy Presidents like we had for decades under dictatorship. That position ought to be filled with thinking people who are politically powerful enough to stand up to the president. 

The writer is a professor at Georgetown University