By Ben Mulwa
Last Saturday, February 20, Constitutional Lawyer Wachira Maina wrote this;
“Yet the President does not have what he now needs most — good legal advice. His legal advisers, especially Attorney-General Githu Muigai, have been spectacular failures. A magnificent poseur, the AG is more committed to airy eloquence than high principle; more interested in catching the eye of the President with showy speeches at The Hague than providing sound advice back home where his real job is. Faceless people appear to have run off with the AG’s functions, leaving the President dangerously exposed at a juridical crash site.”
That’s exactly where the President has put himself, yet again, on this Justice Tunoi matter.
I am not a lawyer, neither would I be anywhere near a constitutional expert, but the excuses Statehouse gave for refusal to abide by express provisions of the Constitution are strikingly frivolous. Does Kinyua intent to tell us that if a person in convicted, say, of murder, by the High Court and files an appeal, then that person begins to serve their sentence until the appeal is heard and determined? In any case, on what grounds does his office imagine Tunoi was being investigated by the JSC if indeed he is not a Supreme Court judge? Did the JSC petition the President on a private citizen? Does the law, in any form, give the President the prerogative to interrogate the decision of the JSC? What part of the Constitution or statute is that argument by Statehouse based on?
It is increasingly becoming difficult to convince any well meaning Kenyan that the President has any interest whatsoever in fighting corruption. If anything, he strikes out as the custodian, defender and protector of the vice, having domiciled it in the highest office in the land.
What we have been treated to thus far, guised as war on corruption, is a high-octane drama and circus, purposefully designed to make fools of the citizenry and a mockery of justice. Nothing confirms these fears that the public has held for so long than the unfolding events surrounding the NYS scam.
The deliberate efforts never to get to the bottom of the NYS saga should, on a good and sane day, cause sufficient angst amongst the youth of Kenya – from whom they perpetrators directly stole. What with over 15 million unemployed young Kenyans prowling our streets, slums and villages.
The Tunoi – Kidero matter touches on the inalienable right of citizens not only to vote, but also to elect representatives of their choice without undue influence, intimidation or coercion. Maybe, just maybe, Ferdinand Waititu won the Nairobi gubernatorial election. As such, by refusing to get to the bottom of this matter, the president has demonstrated that the interests and the will of the people he leads does not matter.
Worse, the decision by Statehouse cannot stop Kenyans from beginning to think wildly, upto and including probably what may have happened to influence the decision by the Supreme Court in on that tense Saturday of March, 2013.
My conclusion is that, either, the president is surrounded by very dangerous fellows whose sole determination is to destroy him completely, or he himself is a very dangerous person that Kenyans should begin to be very, very afraid of.
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