Now Senate to determine Waiguru’s fate

The fate of Ms Anne Waiguru as governor of Kirinyaga will be known when the Senate holds a special sitting to debate the report of the 11-member special committee that investigated allegations levelled against her by the county’s assembly members.

MCAs impeached her on June 9 on account of gross violation of the Constitution and abuse of office, charges that were canvassed on Tuesday and Wednesday during the trial conducted by the committee  chaired by Kakamega Senator Cleophas Malala.

The committee is expected to submit its report to the House today, being the 10th, and final, day on which the Senate must pronounce itself on the issue in line with the House Rules and the County Governments Act.

And as the committee retreated to write its report on Wednesday, its mandate is limited to establishing whether the evidence submitted before it, and which was relied upon to impeach the governor, is substantiated.

One of the determinations the committee must make is whether the governor abused her office by conferring herself a financial benefit for foreign trips she didn’t make.

MCAs listed about 13 foreign trips she never made but for which she was paid large sums of money, amounting to Sh10.6 million in imprests.

While the governor insists that she travelled, and presented the committee some undated photographs that allege she was away, MCAs did not substantiate this claim and instead turned to the committee to help them procure the proof to nail her.

Ms Waiguru’s submission that Sh4.6 million of the Sh10.6 million was a “completely fictitious” and “nonexistent figure” that was never sent to her account, was never rebutted by MCAs.

The demand, by lawyer Ndegwa Njiru in an application to the committee, that the governor be compelled to surrender her diplomatic and personal passports so that the assembly could “discern the entries”, was suspicious and a sign that the county assembly wanted the governor to implicate herself.

“It is difficult to substantially respond to this allegation because of the nature of the documents given to us by the governor and her legal team,” Mr Njiru said on Tuesday.

But Mr Paul Nyamodi, appearing for Ms Waiguru, pushed back the request, arguing that it amounted to the governor assisting the assembly to impeach her.

“It is the county assembly that framed the charge. What did they rely on to frame such a charge if it is the governor who must provide her passport as proof?” he said.

When the Waiguru team confronted Mr David Kinyua, the MCA who moved the impeachment motion, with photographs suggesting that the governor had actually travelled and that the entourage included assembly Majority Leader Peter Murango, there was a lame rebuttal.

“There is no way the majority leader could have travelled,” he replied, adding that the y assembly did not finance such a trip.

Similarly, when she claimed that the majority leader, who was a key proponent of the motion to impeach her, was present on these trips she is alleged to have skipped, and that they were even photographed together, Mr Murango, who was present at the proceedings did not object.

The allegation that the governor violated the law by not delivering the annual State of the County address for two consecutive years is also likely to come under scrutiny.

First, the committee will have to address whether delivering the address is legally mandatory, and if so, where such an address should be made.

Similarly, the committee must state whether in the absence of constitutional and statutory requirements, the standing orders of a county assembly can compel the governor to act in a particular way.

While the MCAs insist that the governor has not delivered the address in the year 2018 and 2019, an act they say undermined the authority of the county assembly, the governor dismissed the claims when she appeared before the committee on Wednesday.

Ms Waiguru alleges that she delivered the first address at the County Assembly in 2018 followed by the second one last year, whose setting was at the Kerugoya Hospital.

And this will be the crux of the matter. Mr Kinyua, the MCA who moved the impeachment motion at the Assembly and followed it up with evidence in the witness box, says they don’t recognise the address delivered at the Hospital.

“It is unheard of for such an address to be delivered in the hospital. The address determines the county assembly’s legislative agenda, county budget, policies and plans and therefore should be delivered at the County Assembly because we are the executors,” he told the committee when he took the stand on Tuesday.

But Waiguru through her lawyer Andrew Karani challenged the MCA to state where the law mandates the governor to deliver in the Assembly. “The County Government Act is the enabling law but it doesn’t mention the County Assembly,” Mr Karani said.

Mr Njiru suggested that the Assembly’s Standing Orders obligates the governor to deliver an address at the assembly.

The governor was accused of having used Sh15 million to irregularly procure the office of the governor’s official vehicle. The tendering process was done before Ms waiguru took office but when she declared that