NAIROBI: A Kenyan High Court is due Tuesday to hear an appeal by impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua over his ouster in an unprecedented Senate vote last week.
In fast-moving political drama, the court on Friday ordered the impeachment to be put on hold, only minutes after parliament had approved his replacement, Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki.
Gachagua was impeached by the Senate on Thursday on five out of 11 charges leveled against him, including stirring ethnic divisions and undermining the judiciary.
The embattled 59-year-old had been admitted to hospital with chest pains ahead of the Senate session, but the upper house rejected an appeal by his lawyers for the process to be delayed.
The impeachment was the culmination of a public falling out between Gachagua and President William Ruto.
And after being released from hospital Gachagua on Sunday lashed out at his boss as “vicious” and claimed there had been attempts on his life in the past.
Gachagua said his security had been withdrawn and his entire staff sent on compulsory leave.
A three-judge bench at the High Court in Nairobi is due to start hearing Gachagua’s impeachment appeal on Tuesday.
“The petition and application raise monumental constitutional issues,” the High Court said in its ruling on Friday.
The order effectively blocks Kindiki, a 52-year-old lawyer turned heavyweight politician, from taking office.
Ruto — who had chosen Gachagua as his running mate for the August 2022 election — has not yet given any public comment on the impeachment.
Kenya court to hear challenge to deputy leader’s impeachment
https://arab.news/v2dag
Kenya court to hear challenge to deputy leader’s impeachment
- Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua was impeached by the Senate on Thursday on five out of 11 charges leveled against him
- The impeachment was the culmination of a public falling out between Gachagua and President William Ruto
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
