• The committee members found themselves under fire from residents, who accused them of being compromised.
• The committee found Balala innocent last week, saying most of the allegations levelled against him were unsubstantiated.
The committee that exonerated Mombasa Transport executive Tawfiq Balala from any wrongdoing in the impeachment motion has defended itself, saying it had limited time to investigate him.
The five-man team also accused other MCAs of failing to table concrete evidence against the Trade executive.
Mombasa residents have accused the committee of being compromised to let Balala off the hook.
Balala, a close ally of Governor Hassan Joho, was impeached on March 19 when 38 out of 42 MCAs voted to have him removed over incompetence, abuse of office and arrogance.
The Fadhili Makarani-led committee, however, found Balala innocent last week, saying most of the allegations levelled against him were unsubstantiated.
“The select committee, having investigated allegations of incompetence and gross violation of the Constitution and other laws and received submissions from witnesses and Balala himself, has considered the evidence adduced and the proofs thereof,” Makarani said.
"[We] unanimously agreed that all the allegations were unsubstantiated and, therefore, have recommended that no further proceedings should be taken,” they said in a report tabled in the assembly last Thursday.
Some of the MCAs in the committee told the Star the 38 MCAs who voted to remove Balala should be blamed for the collapse of the impeachment motion because they failed to table concrete evidence.
“We gave them two full days to bring in their evidence but only two of them brought. They developed cold feet,” one of the committee members said.
The Star has learnt that only three MCAs, Kongowea’s Mohamed Abrari, Frere Town’s Charles Kitula and motion mover Athman Shebe of Jomvu Kuu ward, brought documented evidence.
The committee member, who sought anonymity, said the evidence the three brought was not enough to have Balala removed from office.
The others brought verbal evidence.
“You cannot use verbal evidence in a court of law,” the committee member said.
“If we used the evidence we were given and he went to court, he would have ‘jailed’ us. We were going to pay him a lot of money,” they said.
However, Makarani said MCAs brought their evidence, some of which was oral, but not enough to strengthen their case.
Some of them gave the committee members phone numbers of residents to call and ask them about street lighting in their areas of residence.
“Most people are disappointed because they had invested a lot of emotions in this matter. Those bashing us are just being driven by emotions,” Fadhili said.
However, another committee member said they failed to get crucial documents from another committee, further weakening the case against Balala.
“Some crucial evidence was hidden from us. We could not access. Some files got lost somewhere. We were not given any summons given to Balala,” the MCA said.
One of the accusations was the failure to honour summonses.
Balala had appeared before the committee with three lawyers and seven chief officers and directors from his department.
“He had a lot of booklets and documents,” another committee member said.
Shebe on Monday defended MCAs, saying they took all the available evidence to the committee.
“It is very unfortunate. The evidence we gathered was enough to impeach him,” Shebe said on the phone.
He said it is unlikely that only three MCAs took documented evidence to the committee.
“I am the motion mover and I did not come up with this motion all by myself. It was a culmination of many pieces of evidence from around the entire Mombasa county,” Shebe said.