Waiguru to Senate: Kirinyaga MCAs said they will impeach me 9 times, this is the first

Kirinyaga Governor has scoffed at Kirinyaga MCAs, terming her impeachment as unfortunate while rubbishing the allegations of abuse of office and graft as salacious and malicious.

Appearing before an 11-member Senate Committee on Tuesday, Governor Waiguru claimed her ouster was instigated by people keen on settling political scores.

She accused the county assembly of falsifying the allegations against her and in retrospect wasting the Senate’s time with issues that could have been dealt with at the Kirinyaga County Assembly.

“Impeachment and removal from office was never intended, and should never be based on falsities, innuendo, rumor, hearsay, conjecture, and certainly not malice,” her statement read.

She accused a section of the MCAs of frustrating her work in the county by threatening people perceived to be in her camp and making it hard to employ staff even for critical services.

“As a matter of fact, in the last month alone two CECs, one Cos and the County Secretary have been given a vote of no confidence by the Assembly. Critical State officers including CECs and members of the County Public

Service Board have not been approved by the Assembly making it difficult to employ staff even for critical health services. Services to the people of Kirinyaga are affected and will continue to be affected,” she explained.

For instance, she noted that the allegations of illegal award of tenders were false and noted that the controversial Ksh.50m tender does not exist to begin with.

“Further, it will be brought to your attention that the much talked about Kshs 50 million tender does not exist! Yet they included it in the motion and passed it in the assembly. Further, the allegation of Kshs 30million for the said tender also was a deliberate and false allegation. There was no such payment. Surely, these kind of false allegations are not only malicious but should not be tolerated at the senate,” her statement reads

23 out of 33 Kirinyaga Members of County Assembly (MCAs) on June 9, 2020 supported the motion to remove Governor Waiguru from office on the grounds of gross misconduct.

The motion had been filed by Mutira Ward MCA David Kinyua Wangui.

Chaos erupted during the hearing of the motion after two MCAs Anthony Munene (Karumandi ward) and Nominated MCA Lucy Njeri —who are allies of Governor Waiguru— were removed from the proceedings.

Governor Waiguru later released a statement calling out the MCAs for what she termed as an ill-informed and ill-timed impeachment motion.

“As I have stated before, the issues raised in the motion are baseless and a waste of valuable time that would be better spent handling the serious issues impacting the county including the corona crisis,” she said.

The High Court in Nairobi on Thursday last week dismissed a case filed by the Kirinyaga County boss that challenged her ouster.

In his ruling, Justice Weldon Korir noted that the MCAs were satisfied that the COVID-19 pandemic had been contained in the county and they were free to proceed with the impeachment motion without seeking the authority of the court.

“I have carefully looked at the pleadings of the parties and oral submissions its clear to me that the respondents did not violate the orders issued by this court on April 7 when impeaching the petitioner,” the judge said.