Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change, and Forestry, Aden Duale, has outlined eight key reasons that led to the inclusion of impeachment in the Kenyan Constitution.

Duale explained that impeachment serves as a critical mechanism to check and balance power, prevent misuse of office, and maintain accountability among state officers.

The former Majority Leader of the National Assembly explained that impeachment is designed to ensure that state officers fulfill their duties within constitutional boundaries.

Duale stressed that this process not only requires officers to be accountable for their actions but also reinforces the separation of powers, allowing the Constitution to address any excesses by state officers.

“To act as a constitutional safeguard and check and balance device against abuse of office by state officers,” he stated in a post on his X account on October 29, 2024.

“Serves to obligate state officers to exercise their functions within the confines of the Constitution, acts as an oversight tool for the Legislature to hold state officers accountable for their actions, serves to keep state officers answerable on the manner of discharge of their functions, underscores that separation of powers is to be conceptualized within the dictates of the Constitution, and any excesses are to be stopped through impeachment processes,” Duale explained.

Duale also stated that impeachment is ‘an indirect way through which the people of Kenya hold state officers accountable through their elected representatives.’

Adding;

“It ring-fences the principle that no institution is above the law and power is to be exercised in a manner that promotes national values and principles of governance. Recognizes that human beings are not infallible, and through removal processes, you can entrench restraint. It affirms as true the common saying that ‘the true nature of man left to himself without restraint is not nobility but savagery.’”

Duale’s comments follow the recent impeachment of Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua after a historic Senate vote, marking him as the first deputy president removed from office through impeachment since Kenya’s 2010 Constitution was enacted.

Gachagua has since contested the decision in court, with the case currently ongoing.