Parliament has voted to impeach Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua. The next step is a trial in the Senate, where his fate will be determined. Whether Gachagua goes or stays is of no consequence.
Either way, it will not change the fortunes of the failing Kenya Kwanza regime. Most people, especially the Gen Z, think that for Kenya to press the restart button, both William Ruto and Gachagua should leave office.
The public participation sessions across the country almost backfired on the puppeteers when youths took the opportunity to chant their slogan: “ Ruto must go”.
In a TV interview before the impeachment, Gachagua, responding to the grounds for impeachment, revealed that the only successful government programme was the anti-alcoholism drive he championed.
It is, of course, debatable whether this programme was successful, because it dealt with the symptoms of alcoholism, not its root cause. The root cause is joblessness. Therefore, even the one programme touted as a success was, in reality, not any such thing.
Second, in the same interview and during his own defence in Parliament, Gachagua alluded to the sliding back to dictatorship. This slide has, of course, been seen in many moments over the last two years.
Gachagua’s admission was only a confirmation. We have seen disobedience of court orders. We have seen gross abuse of office by state officials. We have seen abductions, torture, forced disappearances and murder of government critics.
Gachagua’s reference to this retrogression is ironical because he was a District Officer in the Kanu dictatorship, ruthlessly enforcing its repressive decrees.
Third, Gachagua asked MPs to focus on the more serious issue of endemic corruption. Again, this was confirmation of the wanton plunder exposed almost daily by the Auditor-General and the media.
Fourth, Gachagua distanced himself from the Adani deal, again confirming what activists and media have suspected – that this is a scam designed to enrich government officials.
The Deputy President also revealed that public participation on his impeachment was stage-managed, and that bribe money oiled the sessions.
Then, during the impeachment debate in Parliament, we got to see the shameful quality of debate of those who manage our affairs: The inability to string two logical sentences together; the absence of reference to regional or international precedents; ad-hominem and non-sequitur logical fallacies, and the sycophantic verbal diarrhea reminiscent of Kanu-era demagogues.
But that was not all. No, a single “debater” could string together two grammatically correct sentences. It was a torture to listen to the tortured speeches, breaking even rudimentary grammar rules.
We should consider allowing parliamentarians to speak in their vernacular and provide translators. In summary, the impeachment saga showcased our worst instincts, confirmed the hypocrisy, and moral and financial corruption of those who govern us.
The saga further made the case for a complete overhaul of the rotten Kenyan political establishment. Shameless pantomime.
Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political and social commentator.
