Take responsibility for gov’t failures or return your DP pay, Gachagua told

Suna West MP Peter Masara has criticised former deputy president Rigathi Gachagua for distancing himself from President William Ruto’s government's failures.

Gachagua, who was impeached in October, on Sunday condemned the government for what he called rushed and poor decisions, coercing and blackmailing Kenyans, and turning a blind eye to public pushback.

In an interview with NTV, Gachagua said he was not involved in the conceptualisation and roll-out of some of the unpopular policies such as the dysfunctional transition from the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) to the Social Health Authority (SHA).

Masara on Tuesday said the former DP should be held accountable for the government’s failures, arguing that Gachagua should return the money he earned in office if he wants to distance himself from the government’s performance.

“The person who should be held accountable and responsible for the messes in government is Gachagua; he was the principal assistant to the President. The country is too big and the President has so many responsibilities,” the MP told Citizen TV’s Day Break program.

“Gachagua was supposed to do his work and if he failed to, he should return even the money he was earning as a deputy president if he was not able to do what was expected of him.”

Masara dismissed the ousted deputy president’s statements as attempts to seek sympathy, which he says cannot succeed.

“Even when he gets the sympathy of the entire country, he cannot be elected anywhere,” the Suna West MP said.

“He was a part and parcel of the bad happenings and he was quiet then because he was earning, and he is speaking now yet we were paying him to speak then.”

Masara further accused Gachagua of divisive politics, saying “Kenya is a multiparty democracy and when you start playing the kind of politics Gachagua was playing... he was doomed to fail.”

In the Sunday interview, when pressed about his responsibility in some of the controversial policies Ruto’s administration has rolled out, Gachagua pointed to the allegations levelled against him in his ouster motion, like insubordination.

He called it coded language to kick him out of office because he opposed government policies he deemed punitive to Kenyans.

“I have gotten where I am today because I refuse to betray the people of Kenya; what is not right I said and where the people of Kenya raised problems, I would tell the President about it,” Gachagua, who had served as DP for more than two years before he was kicked out of Ruto's government, said then.