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Besieged Nairobi County Assembly Speaker Elachi impeached

By COLLINS OMULO September 6th, 2018 3 min read

Nairobi County Assembly Speaker Beatrice Elachi has been impeached following a special sitting on Thursday to discuss her conduct.

Elachi’s fate was sealed after 103 members voted to oust her, two voted no, while two others abstained.

Jubilee and Nasa MCAs unanimously teamed up to impeach Elachi whom they accused of abuse of office and sabotage of assembly operations.

The ward reps had to vote to secure her removal from office, with 103 voting in favor of the motion and only two coming to Elach’s defense.

And following the vote, deputy speaker John Kamangu declared that Elachi had ceased to be the Speaker.

“From today Beatrice Elachi stops to be the Speaker of Nairobi County Assembly,” Kamangu said.

Earlier in the day Elachi has called on the MCAs planning to impeach her to shelve the idea and instead embrace dialogue.

The deposed Speaker had termed the discussion of her conduct as ‘a non-issue’ challenging the disgruntled MCAs to instead focus on discussing issues affecting Nairobi, the challenges and how to deal with them.

NON-ISSUE

“It is a non-issue but if you say you have their support and they are saying that you are denying them trips then you will be lying but I want to thank those who have stood with me and those who feel they have been pressured,” said Ms Elachi while in Malindi.

To push through the motion, they had to amend several sections of the standing order to shorten the impeachment process of the assembly speaker.

They accused Elachi for quoting in excess of Sh25 million in the purchase of the speakers residence which was valued at Sh100 million.

They also claim that Elachi interfered, influenced and even threatened staff to award the tender to her close relative. This, they said, amounts to conflict of interest and violation of chapter six of the constitution on responsibilities of leadership.

The MCAs further claim that the speaker, sabotaged, undermined and unilaterally undertook the functions of the County Assembly Service Board contrary to section 12 of the county governments act.

The legislators claim that the speaker invited DCI officers to probe the officers of the county assembly without the approval of the assembly leadership.

According to the MCAs, the speaker unilaterally appointed accounting officers without consulting the board.

They are further accused Elachi of spending a staggering taxpayers money amounting to Sh550,000 to travel to Dubai to be awarded a honorary degree by the London Graduate School.

FAKE DEGREE

They claim the degree was fake and was a ploy by some Nigerian fraudsters commonly known as 419 scams. They claim that a renowned journalist and an activist have in the past publicly put in the social media pages that they had been invited by the University to pay for the Degrees.

Still on the use of public resources, they claimed that Elachi spent taxpayers money on ‘dubious’ travel to Dallas in US ostensibly for Diaspora Women Network Conference when in actual sense she was traveling for plastic surgery and Knee surgery.

This, according to them was captured by the CIC insurance in their claim for Sh1million.

They also accuse her of traveling on an inflated First Class air ticket Texas, USA, AT Kshs 1,500,000 on 23rd May, 2018.

According to the standing orders, the removal of the speaker starts with notice of motion, which if adopted an ad hoc committee is formed to investigate the speaker.

The committee, if satisfied with the grounds of the removal should give the assembly a go ahead to debate such a motion.

The MCAs however, seemingly aware of the requirements, amended all the clauses deterring the impeachment process to go on on the very day of issuing the notice of motion.