Kericho Governor Dr. Erick Mutai has survived a second impeachment attempt after the Senate ruled that the threshold for his removal from office was not met. Senators determined that the County Assembly failed to achieve the constitutional requirement of 32 MCAs to pass the motion. During the Senate vote, 16 Senators voted Yes, 26 voted No, while one abstained, effectively nullifying the County Assembly’s decision and securing Governor Mutai’s stay in office.
The Senate proceedings took an unexpected turn when Kericho MCA Hillary Kibet, testifying in support of the Governor, claimed he had been lured with promises of Ksh. 200,000 and foreign trips to Dubai and Rwanda to back the Motion to remove Mutai. He insisted he did not participate in the vote, yet his name appeared among the 33 MCAs recorded as having supported the impeachment. Kibet cited an audio recording, allegedly between himself and the mover of the Motion, MCA Weldon Rogony, in which Rogony purportedly admitted to voting on his behalf and promised him the chairmanship of a County Assembly committee if he backed the Motion. The County Assembly’s legal team dismissed the claims as fabrications, saying the number Kibet presented did not belong to Rogony and no such conversation ever took place.
Senators pressed Kibet on why he chose to attack the integrity of the voting process instead of addressing the substantive charges against the Governor, and further raised questions about the legality of secretly recording a colleague under the Data Protection Act. Another witness, MCA Amos Kimtai, requested to testify in the local dialect, but Temporary Speaker Senator Veronica Maina ruled that only English or Kiswahili could be used. Under cross-examination, Kimtai contradicted himself on several issues, including the timeline of swearing his affidavit and whether he owned a smartphone capable of accessing the internet, raising questions about his credibility.
Governor Mutai’s defence team also presented a group of 14 MCAs who testified collectively, denying that they had voted in favour of the impeachment. They faulted the new electronic voting system in the Assembly chamber, claiming they had not been trained on how to use it and arguing that it was deliberately designed to disadvantage certain members. They maintained that they withheld participation, yet were unfairly recorded as having voted for the Governor’s ouster.
Earlier, Senate Speaker Amason Kingi informed the House that the Senate Clerk had received an expert report from the ICT Authority on the electronic voting system used in the Kericho County Assembly. The report, submitted on the evening of 28th August 2025 at 9:35 pm, is set to be presented formally to the Senate, with experts expected to answer questions before final closing arguments.
Despite the heated testimonies and competing claims, Senators later cast their votes and ruled that the impeachment of Governor Erick Mutai had not met the required threshold, giving him a political lifeline and quelling the latest wave of turmoil in Kericho politics.
