Impeachment of the DP confirms the hypocrisy of the Kenyan leaders

The public participation sessions across the country almost backfired on the puppeteers as youth took the opportunity to chant their slogan: “Ruto must go”.

However, this entire impeachment saga has inadvertently exposed some very disturbing things. First, it exposed the regime’s incompetence.

In a TV interview prior to the impeachment, Gachagua, commenting on the grounds for impeachment, revealed that the only successful government program was the anti-alcoholism drive he championed.

It is of course questionable whether this program was successful because it addressed the symptoms of alcoholism, rather than its root cause. The root cause is unemployment. That’s why even the one program that was touted as a success was in reality no such thing.

Second, in the same interview and during his own defense in parliament, Gachagua alluded to the slide back into dictatorship. This slide has obviously been seen many times over the past two years.

Gachagua’s confession was merely confirmation. We have seen disobedience to court orders. We have seen gross abuse of office by state officials. We have seen kidnappings, torture, enforced disappearances and murders of government critics.

Gachagua’s reference to this decline is ironic because he was a district officer in the Kanu dictatorship and ruthlessly enforced its repressive decrees.

Third, Gachagua asked parliamentarians to focus on the more serious issue of endemic corruption. Once again, this was confirmation of the wanton looting exposed almost daily by the Auditor General and the media.

Fourth, Gachagua distanced himself from the Adani deal, reaffirming what activists and media suspected: that this is a scam designed to enrich government officials.

The vice president also revealed that public participation in his ouster was staged and that bribes fueled the sessions.

Then, during the impeachment debate in Parliament, we saw the shameful quality of debate from those who manage our affairs: the inability to string two logical sentences together; the lack 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 wasn’t all. No, a single ‘debater’ could string together two grammatically correct sentences. It was torture listening to the tortured speeches, breaking even the rudimentary rules of grammar.

We should consider allowing parliamentarians to speak in their native language and provide translators. In summary, the impeachment saga has exposed our worst instincts and confirmed the hypocrisy and moral and financial corruption of those who govern us.

The saga further called for a complete overhaul of the rotten Kenyan political establishment. Shameless pantomime.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political and social commentator.