Waiguru must change tack even if she survives ouster bid

Kirinyaga Governor Anne Mumbi Waiguru won a crucial, initial victory in the impeachment process against her when the senate voted on Tuesday to refer the matter to a special committee rather than a full plenary.

From the outset, that was the way the governor wanted the matter handled. She had made that abundantly clear to the Jubilee and ODM national powerbrokers who had taken up her case. Sure enough, she got her wish.

Impeachment proceedings done through committee have previously been criticised as faulty. Brokers can easily infiltrate and corruptly manipulate the outcome. After all, you only need to influence six out of 11 members to overturn an impeachment.

However that was not the reason Waiguru preferred the committe route. The senate plenary is a platform for grandstanding. Her enemies in the chamber would have had a field day tearing down her character in the full glare of TV cameras, much as we saw during the Ferdinand Waititu show in January. Waiguru had absolutely no intention of being subjected to that sort of lynching.

The timing also had a lot to do with the way the strategy was played out. Waiguru's impeachment coincided with a time Tangatangas in Parliament have been in an unusually foul mood, thanks to crushing setbacks such as being kicked out of leadership slots in the Senate and National Assembly and the 'de-whipping' of their members from parliamentary committees. The arrival of an impeachment target of the 'Kieleweke' stature of Waiguru was like dangling red meat to a hungry and unruly Tanganga pack.

The Waiguru impeachment process has assumed a profile like no other because of who she is: the most prominent voice in the Mt Kenya region to embrace unreservedly the Uhuru Kenyatta-Raila Odinga 'Handshake' and the BBI process. This indeed has taken courage. She was the first central Kenya leader to declare unequivocally that the region "is ready for Raila Odinga" as the country's leader.

However, Waiguru's problems in Kirinyaga did not originate from her 'Handshake' stand or even the usual Kieleweke-Tangatanga politics. "All politics is local," so goes the famous dictum. Here was a former World Bank consultant and later head of a Treasury department sucked into an upcounty political job where it was imperative to adjust to dealing with rough, earthy, grassroots MCAs. She never quite hit it off with them. Nor could their style of doing things mesh with hers. There's a cliche that a technocrat's approach to anything is to look at the policy notebook whereas that of the rural politician is to scratch a facilitator's back.

Lately, intrigues of a 'Deep State' nature had entered the mix. Waiguru got herself into a very public spat with Interior PS Karanja Kibicho, a native of Kirinyaga, over a Sh15 billion Kenya Medical Research Institute project being set up in the County. Kibicho won that battle, but the bad blood lingered. The PS has denied he influenced the governor's impeachment by the Kirinyaga County Assembly. He has further denied he wants to become governor of the County come 2022 as Waiguru has claimed.

Enter Purity Ngirici, the Kirinyaga Women MP and ally-turned-foe of the governor. During her noisy pro-impeachment campaigning when the matter was before the Kirinyaga Assembly, she sought to frame it as a Kieleweke-Tangatanga clash. That was a blunder because when the case came to the Senate it inevitably drew in mighty pro-Handshake forces in a manner that has made the local Kirinyaga issues at stake get lost in the lethal counter-attack. Anyway here we are now with a saga that is no longer a mere Kirinyaga County affair.

It's a mystery why Waiguru's powerful patrons hadn't bothered to ward off the impeachment at the Kirinyaga Assembly level. There's wide agreement now across the county that, going forward, Waiguru must sharply change her modus operandi as governor - if she overcomes the impeachment. Otherwise, as one angry MCA vowed, "we will impeach her again, and again." Ironically, the fallout may not spare Kibicho either. Many political heavyweights have rued the day they tried to take on the PS. Alas, the Queen Bee could as yet have the last laugh.

* * * * *

Constitutional lawyer Nzamba Kitonga, who chaired the panel that wrote our current constitution, thinks judges should be barred from sitting on the Judicial Service Commission. I agree. The relationship between the JSC and the Judiciary is badly incestuous. Judicial officers form about half of the JSC and have actively blocked its reform.

They love their independence which, absurdly, comes with no accountability. The JSC must be reformed under a new law mandating membership to people without vested affiliations.

[email protected]