Kenya's courts decline to block Senate vote on deputy president's impeachment

NAIROBI (Reuters) -Kenya's courts on Tuesday declined to stop this week's Senate vote on Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua's impeachment from going ahead.

Last week Kenya's parliament voted to impeach Gachagua for allegedly stirring ethnic hatred, embezzlement and undermining the government, paving the way for the Senate to debate whether to remove him from office on Wednesday and Thursday.

Several legal challenges have so far failed to prevent the impeachment process from proceeding.

In one courtroom, Justice Chacha Mwita referred a case to the chief justice to appoint a panel of judges to make a final determination.

In a second courtroom, a panel of judges declined to immediately enforce a gag order on parliament, and said it would make a full ruling on the constitutionality of Gachagua's impeachment on Wednesday morning, when debate in the Senate was due to begin.

Gachagua has said the impeachment motion was based on falsehoods that constituted a "political lynching", according to court documents seen by Reuters.

The deputy president backed President William Ruto in his 2022 election win and helped secure votes from the populous central Kenya region.

But in recent months he has spoken of being frozen out, and there have been local news reports of a rift emerging with Ruto as political alliances have shifted.

Ruto fired most of his cabinet and included members of the opposition in his cabinet after nationwide protests against tax increases in which more than 50 people were killed.

The president has not commented publicly on the impeachment proceedings against Gachagua.

(Reporting by Hereward Holland and Edwin Okoth; Editing by Alexander Winning, Jan Harvey and Ros Russell)