Dr Eric Mutai has once again survived attempts to remove him from office as Kericho Governor after the Senate rejected the impeachment proceedings at the County Assembly on account that the two thirds majority was not achieved.

After three days of deliberations in the House, the question that confronted Senators was on the voting at the County Assembly and whether two thirds majority was achieved during the voting process. So contentious was the issue of the process of voting and who actually voted that the House failed to delve into substantive matters leading to the impeachment at the County Assembly.

The MCAs had filed three charges against the Governor: Violations of the Constitution and other laws, abuse of office and gross misconduct.

But the question as to whether voting took place and the number of MCAs who voted lingered. The Governor called nearly 20 witnesses, including 18m MCAs, including an IT expert to defend him.

The County Assembly summoned 6 witnesses while the Senate resorted to an independent expert from the ICT Authority. However, none of these expert witnesses cleared the doubts on who actually voted and whether the threshold was achieved

A total of 26 Senators voted against the Motion brought to the floor of the House by the Majority Leader Aaron Cheruiyot, arguing that the voting in the County Assembly was unverifiable and thus unable to tell whether voting actually took place. A total of 16 Senators said the threshold was achieved and thus supported the Motion while one Senator abstained.

In his contribution in the Motion, Senator Okongo Omogeni described the electronic voting system, which the County installed just a day before the impeachment proceedings of the Governor, as special purpose vehicle designed to take the Governor home. 

“I have sat here for three days, but I am unable to understand this system. I have listened to experts but all they did was to create a reasonable doubt in my mind. The doubt as to whether 33 MCAs actually voted for the Motion at the County Assembly,” he said.

The same argument was picked up by Senator Danson Mungatana who said that despite the expert evidence, doubts lingered through as to whether 33 MCAs voted for the Motion. “Experts created doubt,” he said, referring to the two ICT experts who appeared before the Committee. 

However he took aim to the expert from ICT authority.

“We are dealing with a criminal matter,” he added, adding that the standard of proof for the impeachment of Governors should be raised to the same level as criminal trials: beyond reasonable doubts.

Senator Tom OJienda said the experts had failed to authenticate the credibility of the voting process, leaving doubts in the head of the Senators. “If there is doubt, evidence should swing in favour of the Governor,” he said. 

Senator Godfrey Osotsi dismissed the report of the ICT Authority expert saying that findings were not supported by documents. 

Speaker Amason Kingi terminated the impeachment proceedings after the vote saying that if the threshold was not achieved at the County Assembly, the Senate had no business conducting the trial.