Three Kenya School of Law students have moved to court seeking orders to stop the Senate from proceeding with the impeachment hearing of Kericho County Governor Eric Mutai for not meeting the two/thirds rule.
Ronald Too, George Njau and Christopher Kimiti want the court to issue an interlocutory injunction against the Senate and the Speaker from proceeding with the hearing scheduled for 14th and 15th October 2024.
“An Interlocutory injunction be issued against the 2nd and the 3rd respondents barring them from proceeding with the impeachment hearing of Kericho County Governor Erick Mutai scheduled for October 14th and 15th 2024 pending the hearing and determination of this petition,” the petitioners state.
The petitioners also want the court to issue a declaration that the impeachment motion against the Governor by the County Assembly of Kericho on 2nd October 2024 was not supported by at least 2/3 of all the members of the County Assembly as statutorily required.
It is also their submission that, the Speaker of Kericho County Assembly, acted ultra vires and in total defiance of the law by making formal communication of a resolution that did not meet the statutorily provided threshold.
In addition, the trio wants a declaration that the Senate lacks jurisdiction to hear and determine the impeachment motion which failed to garner the support of at least 2/3 of all the members of the County Assembly of Kericho as currently constituted.
The petitioners argue that on the 20th of September 2022, during the election of the Speaker of the County Assembly of Kericho, whereby the current speaker of the County Assembly of Kericho was elected, the clerk ruled that for one to be elected as a Speaker of the Assembly at the first round of voting, one had to garner at least two thirds of the votes of all the 47 members of the Kericho County Assembly; further ruling that two thirds of 47 was 32 which was mathematically and legally correct then, as it is now.
According to court documents, on the 8th October 2024 during the voting of the motion to impeach the Governor, the Speaker of the County Assembly considered the 31 votes in favor of the motion, based on “House Traditions”, as the required number of votes (2/3 votes) to pass a motion to impeach the Governor, directly contradicting the Clerk’s ruling of 20th September 2022 who had ruled that two thirds of 47 was 32.
The petitioners further claim thag based on the statutory requirement, the required number of votes out of the all the 47 members of the County Assembly, the required number of votes based on arithmetic computation of two-thirds of 47 votes should be a number above 31.33333 votes and not a number below so as to achieve the element of at-least.
“To pass the motion to impeach the Governor, the Speaker of the County Assembly of Kericho ought to have ensured that the number of votes in favor of the motion were 31.3333 and above, strictly not anything below 31.3333,” the petitioners added.
For the above, the trio wants the court to declare that the Senate impeachment motion against Governor Mutai, being entertained by the Senate, is unconstitutional, unprocedural and illegal.