Kenyan lawmakers are planning to remove the deputy president from office, the party leader says

The majority leader of house in Kenya said that lawmakers want to remove Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua from office because they believe he is damaging the government. This shows that President William Ruto and his deputy are becoming more distant from each other.

The move could make things harder for the government after months of deadly protests over a controversial budget bill forced Ruto to put the bill on hold and fire almost his whole cabinet in June.

“There is an impeachment motion against the deputy president, and as a member of parliament for Kikuyu, I have already signed it,” Kimani Ichung’wah, the leader of the Democrats, said on Sunday.

“I will support that impeachment motion to stop a process where government is being undermined and sabotaged from within government,” he added.

Gachagua’s reps were not available for comment when called on Monday.

He has recently said that he feels pushed to the sidelines and denied that he or his friends were involved in the unrest. He called the claims “a futile attempt to soil my name and hopefully create grounds for the mooted impeachment proceedings against me.”

He told reporters on Sunday that any move to impeach would need Ruto’s approval. You can’t get the bill to parliament without the president’s OK. If it gets to parliament, the president gave the go-ahead for it.”

Gachagua has support in the central area of Kenya, which is very populous, and trying to remove him could make people there angry, which would make Ruto’s problems even worse.

More than 50 people were killed in the protests against the financing bill. It was Ruto’s worst problem since he became president in 2022. Protesters were against the bill’s tax increases and wanted something to be done about bad government and crime.

Ruto made a lot of changes in July when he put forward four members of the biggest opposition party for a “broad-based” cabinet. But activists said the new government would keep up a pattern of leaders using the opposition to get what they want instead of making the big changes that people want.