Advertise

Advertise

Azimio’s call for Judiciary reforms; my personal take

 

The Azimio coalition has called for urgent judiciary reforms.

Competitors and detractors have wrongly called it sour grapes, assuming the call to be based on the Supreme Court ruling on this year’s presidential election petition.

Like millions of Kenyans, I was surprised and disappointed that the court found it necessary to berate and demean the litigants and their lawyers.

It would have been enough for the justices to say they were not persuaded, for even an accused person has a right to a defence.

I back judicial reforms out of personal experience. In the past couple of years, I’ve been condemned unheard thrice: once by a tribunal and twice by the High Court.

A Supreme Court judge once explained to me that as an impartial arbiter, the court cannot condemn a person unheard.

Nor can it issue orders that are incapable of being obeyed. For example, a judge cannot order you to commit suicide or to break the law. Third, remedies cannot issue from illegality.

As my column is short, let me deal with only the first one. Condemned unheard! How did it come to pass that I was condemned, not once, not twice, but thrice?

Upon being elected Laikipia governor, I directed a thorough audit of the payroll. Expectedly, the unions went to court.

Ultimately, the court allowed us to proceed. The outcome was 30 ghosts and more than 600 appointment letters signed by unknown persons!

Unable to explain the matter, the officer in charge of human resources was interdicted. He appealed to the Public Service Commission and was recently reinstated.

Conciliation

Yet we should not be surprised. The same tribunal (PSC is the court of the first instance for county HR issues) had found it inconvenient to hear a case between the doctors’ union and the county, preferring a conciliation.

The county declined because the strike that gave rise to the case had already been declared illegal by the High Court and the unionists were fined.

Perhaps annoyed by such insolence by country bumpkins, the PSC proceeded to issue a ruling, as if a hearing had taken place!

Worse still, armed with this ruling, the unionists rushed to the High Court, requesting that it should adopt the findings of the tribunal.

The county objected. Is it not highly irregular for a lower court to overturn the decision of a superior court, we posed?

How could any remedies legitimately arise after the High Court declared the strike illegal?

And how could a ruling be issued without a hearing? The High Court, however, adopted the ruling of the tribunal.

What followed will sound like fiction. The county rushed to the Court of Appeal.

The unionists, having now found a way to stick it to the county, filed for contempt. A year passed.

Then, 14 former (such as myself) and current county officials, recently found out from newspapers that we had been found guilty of contempt and should come to court for sentencing.

Never served, never heard! How then could they have been found guilty?

How many other Kenyans have been condemned unheard, like the 14 of us? What should we do with a system that can condemn a citizen unheard? Reform.   BY DAILY NATION  

No comments

Translate