Law Society of Kenya (LSK) President Charles Kanjama has questioned the court’s decision on Rigathi Gachagua’s impeachment, saying that once the judges found his right to a fair hearing had been violated, the entire process should have been nullified.
Speaking during an interview on Tuesday 9th June, 2026, Kanjama said the ruling came as a surprise to many within the legal community.
“All the times when the court makes such a finding that the right to fair hearing has been substantially violated, the inevitable, inexorable consequence is you invalidate the proceedings. But in this case, the court did something different,” Kanjama said.
Instead of nullifying the impeachment, the court chose to balance the violation of Gachagua’s rights against what it termed the finality of impeachment under Article 145 of the Constitution.
The court reasoned that once a deputy president loses office through impeachment, that loss is final and cannot be reversed.
On that basis, it declined to disturb Kithure Kindiki’s election as the successor, a process it had separately found to be constitutionally sound, and instead awarded Gachagua compensation and a formal declaration that his rights were violated.
Kanjama was clear that legally, the fair hearing violation alone should have been sufficient to bring the whole impeachment down.
“During the court hearing, any challenge to the impeachment process that was substantive was enough to vitiate the entire impeachment process. That ground of fair hearing is such a fundamental ground, it is more important than public participation, more important than other aspects of procedure,” he said.
He anchored his argument in Article 25 of the Constitution, which lists the right to fair trial as an absolute right that cannot be limited under any circumstances.
“Article 25 of the Constitution says the right to fair trial is absolute,” he noted.
Kanjama also took the opportunity to draw a distinction between the right to fair hearing and the right to fair trial, two terms that are often used interchangeably but are not identical.
He explained that fair hearing is the broader concept covering all dispute resolution processes and is enshrined in Article 50 of the Constitution.
Fair trial is a subset of that, found in Article 50 paragraph 2, and tends to apply more specifically to proceedings of a criminal nature.
Gachagua’s Senate impeachment resembled a trial in which he was being convicted of specific offences, Kanjama said it attracted not just fair hearing protections but fair trial rights as well, making the violation all the more serious.
