IEBC Chairperson Wafula Chebukati is not going home any time soon. This is just the plain truth that Kenyans who are opposed to his kind of leadership have to live with.
Wafula Chebukati, and two commissioners yesterday got a major relief after national assembly speaker Justin Muturi overruled a recommendation to dismiss them.
Muturi ordered that sections of a report by the public Accounts Committee (PAC) that called for the removal of Chebukati and Commissioners Boya Molu and Abdi Guliye be expunged. He added that text on the report is inadmissible because it recommends an unconstitutional mode of removal from office of constitutional office holders.
“That the cited text of “General Recommendation of the report having been found to be offensive to the Constitution and therefore inadmissible for debate by the House are forthwith expunged from the Report. The House shall make no reference to either text in its consideration of the Report,” he said.
The speaker said that such a removal could only be exercised in accordance with Article 251 of the Constitution, where a petition is duly filed for the removal of the affected state officer. Consequently, he also called for the deletion of the sections that call for the removal of former IEBC chief Executive Ezra Chiloba, saying the procedure can only be done by the Commission on, among other grounds, gross misconduct.
Muturi also pointed out that expunging offensive parts of the report does not to mean discrediting the entire report, but it means that the house can only debate the report after the committee, chaired by Opiyo Wandayi, makes amendments to it and conforms with his ruling.