IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati. /CFM-FILE.
NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 31- The fate of Taita-Taveta county government will now be determined by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), which has received a petition seeking its dissolution days after the Senate dismissed a bid by County Assembly members to impeach Governor Granton Samboja.
IEBC chairperson Wafula Chebukati has confirmed the commission is now set to start verifying signatures to ensure they belong to voters from the county before taking the next action. The petition was forwarded to the commission on Wednesday afternoon.
Chebukati said he received the petition from Principal Administrative Secretary to the Cabinet Kennedy Kihara, who said it had been presented to President Uhuru Kenyatta.
“IEBC is the only body that has the custody of the voters’ register and therefore, the office of the president has approached us to verify whether they are genuine voters,” said Chebukati.
Adding, “Our technical team has advised us that we may take about 5 days, of course, depending with the available resources. After that, we shall take the petition back to the president with a report of what we will find out for the petition to proceed to the next stage.”
Samboja is defending his seat in court after Members of the County Assembly impeached him.
The case will be determined on November 28 but a Senate committee that was set up to investigate circumstances under which he was impeached has already cleared him of all the charges made against him by MCAs.
The 11-member team chaired by Embu Senator Njeru Ndwiga on October 24 dismissed the charges leveled against the governor saying that it does not meet the constitutional threshold for impeachment.
Senate Speaker Kenneth Lusaka announced that the committee absolved him of all the six charges, allowing him to continue serving as Governor of Taita Taveta County and ruled out any further debate or vote on the matter.
Senators James Orengo, Kipchumba Murkomen and Moses Wetangula said some of the issues raised can be addressed through mediation since they don’t amount to the extreme consequence of impeaching the governor.
The Ndwiga-led committee also said the other charges— misappropriation of funds contrary to Section 196 of the Public Finance Management Act, 2012 and failure to submit to the county assembly an annual report on the implementation status of the county policies and plans as required by section 30 (2)(j) of the County Governments Act, 2012—had not been proved as required by the law.
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