They said his government has failed to honour a court order to pay teachers higher salaries.

According to Daily Nation, Cord Thursday said it was preparing an impeachment Motion against President Uhuru Kenyatta on the grounds that his government has failed to honour a court order to pay teachers higher salaries.

The 15 MPs and senators spoke at Parliament a day before the deadline set by Teachers Service Commission (TSC) for striking teachers to return to work and end their boycott, which enters its 17th day Friday.

They said President Kenyatta was no longer fit to hold office because the Jubilee administration had ignored a legitimate court order and, therefore, deserved to be removed through impeachment.

On July 23, the Court of Appeal directed the TSC to give its 288,060 teachers a pay rise of between 50 and 60 per cent spread over four years.

The award is expected to cost Sh17 billion if implemented in the current financial year, but the National Treasury has said that the government has no money. Last week, President Kenyatta ruled out paying the teachers.

The Cord lawmakers, led by Senate Minority Leader Moses Wetang’ula, said they would lead a demonstration in Nairobi on Wednesday to protest the manner in which the government has handled the teachers’ strike.

They also asked teachers to join the demonstration.

Mr Wetang’ula said the Motion would be tabled in the National Assembly when the House resumes from recess in two weeks.

He said the Motion had the support of Jubilee MPs who are not happy with the way the government has treated teachers.

Some Jubilee MPs from the South Rift had earlier this week expressed their disappointment at the way the teachers are being treated by the government.

Said Mr Wetang’ula: “We have agreed to prepare an impeachment Motion to remove the President for violating the Constitution that he took an oath to protect.

“Having failed to obey the court order, he has, in effect, violated the Constitution.”

NO MONEY

The government has said it has no money to pay the salary increase as ordered by the Court of Appeal and is banking on an appeal by the TSC to reverse the July ruling.

The case is being heard at the Court of Appeal.

In an advisory to the President, the National Treasury warned last week that the only ways in which the government could raise the Sh17 billion needed to pay the teachers was to raise Value Added Tax (VAT) from the current 16 per cent to 21 per cent.

The other alternative was to borrow either locally or abroad, a move it said would hurt the shilling.

The Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut), which called the strike on September 2, has accused the government of shifting goal posts and engaging in propaganda to evade paying teachers.

Should the Opposition go ahead with its threat, it will require one of its MPs to move the Motion once he has obtained the support of a third of all members in the National Assembly.

The Motion will require a vote of two thirds of all MPs to be passed, a tall order for Cord, which has 131 members in the 349-member National Assembly and 29 out of 67 senators.

Once passed, the National Assembly Speaker, Mr Justin Muturi, will have two days to submit the Motion to his Senate counterpart, Mr Ekwee Ethuro, who will have seven days to set up a committee to investigate the charges against the President.

TWO-THIRDS VOTE

Should the allegations be substantiated, it will require a two-thirds vote of all Senators to force the President out of office.

Were that to happen, Deputy President William Ruto will automatically become President and serve for the remainder of the term.

On Thursday, the Opposition said that the money allocated for the school laptops project and the National Youth Service should be redirected to pay the teachers.

In the Senate, the lawmakers from both political divides asked the government to act fast to avert the crisis they said was slowly becoming a catastrophe.

They said it was wrong for school children to continue paying the price for a dispute they knew nothing about.