Lawyer Willis Otieno has argued that the Speaker of the Kericho County Assembly bears responsibility for the collapse of the governor’s impeachment motion in the Senate.

Speaking during an interview on Herman Manyora’s YouTube channel on Tuesday, September 2, 2025, Otieno faulted the Speaker for failing to adopt a transparent voting process. He explained that instead of allowing members to record their stance through a clear manual voting system where each could openly vote in support or opposition, the speaker opted for an electronic system. According to him, this became a major point of contention and eventually led to the entire process being nullified.

“The speaker of Kericho has done the people of Kericho an injustice by adopting an opaque process towards the removal of their governor; it should be transparent; it should be open,” Otieno said.

Otieno maintained that the people of Kericho were subjected to an injustice because the process lacked openness.

He stressed that impeachment matters demand transparency, where members can be seen to cast their votes in a straightforward manner.

By adopting an electronic method that was not fully understood and could not be easily verified, Otieno says the exercise was left vulnerable to abuse and doubts about its credibility.

“When it comes to impeachment, don’t adopt this opaque process; just allow people to vote openly, and they say, ‘I support it; I object,’ and everybody is there to witness. Once the threshold is met, everybody would have seen, but when you adopt an opaque process where you are using some electronic mode of voting that nobody knows what it is, you open it for abuse,” he added.

Senate standoff

The issue further escalated after the governor’s legal team went to the Senate and raised a preliminary objection, arguing that the two-thirds threshold had not been achieved. Some senators claimed they had not voted, casting further doubt on the legitimacy of the outcome.

 This objection, coupled with the contested voting system, ultimately led to the collapse of the impeachment motion, with 22 senators voting to do away with the motion.