abbychumz
Elder Lister
Ferdinand Baba Yao Waititu has lost a bid to have the High Court reverse his impeachment as Kiambu Governor. Waititu had moved to court to challenge his ouster arguing that the Senate deliberated the motion outside the seven-day window as stipulated in the Constitution. Baba Yao also accused the county assembly of failing to submit its impeachment decision within the two-day window stated in the Constitution.
The Kiambu County Assembly rendered its decision on December 19, 2019, and passed it on to the Senate on December 23, 2019. Waititu’s impeachment was deliberated between January 28 and 29, 2020, which was nearly a month after the Kiambu County Assembly’s decision. However, Justices George Dulu, Grace Nzioka and Wilfrida Okwany ruled that computation of the timelines was not set in black and white as weekends and times that the legislating houses were on recess should have been exempted from the count. The judges observed that December 19, 2019, when Waititu’s impeachment was proposed by the county assembly, is exempted from the two-day count as it was on a Friday, and the next two days were also out of the count. “In our view, the period of the recess is exempt from computation of time. We, therefore, find that from the uncontested chronology of events before the Senate from December 23, 2019, when it received the Kiambu County Assembly’s resolution on impeachment to January 29, 2020, when it voted to impeach Mr Waititu, the time taken to deal with the matter was necessary and reasonable in the circumstances and within the set timelines,” the judges ruled. The Judges unanimously ruled that the Kiambu County Assembly and the Senate followed due procedure in approving Waititu’s impeachment.
