Onyango Oloo Muses on the Historic September Ruling

[Onyango Oloo]

Onyango Oloo Muses on the Historic September Ruling

Some of the people I interact with on social media have made much of the fact that the Kenyan Chief Justice is a Seventh Day Adventist.

Others have harped on the fact that he is a Kisii from Nyamira.

Others have just focused on that he is Maraga to whom they will name children born today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year and the coming decade.

Such is the penchant for Kenyans to personalize and tribalize everything.

Few people remember the Chief Justice’s actual words.

David Maraga said that that the SUPREME COURT, by a MAJORITY DECISION made a ruling that Uhuru Kenyatta was not been validly elected as President.

Reports say that this was a four two decision.

Others put it at 5-2.

We know that Ojwang' and Njoki dissented.

Who were the others?

Was Justice Ibrahim who was in hospital counted?

One person overlooked by most people commenting on the ruling is Justice Lenaola.

Having interacted with him briefly and followed some of his rulings before he was elevated to the Supreme Court, I think, in my opinion, Justice Lenaola is one of most progressive people on that Supreme Court bench. And remember apart from him and Maraga there are at least two other colleagues on that Supreme Court who made that historic ruling that we are all hailing: the Deputy Supreme Court Justice and Smokin Wanjala.

Like I said, I do not know if Justice Ibrahim weighed in on the matter but I would like to think, given his history as a former detainee his vote would have gone with the majority.

Speaking of former political prisoners, human rights activists like myself were very disappointed with my friend, comrade and mentor Willy Mutunga and the 2013 Supreme Court decision against Raila Odinga. But the former Chief Justice has never gone public in full over what happened back then.

What really happened?

At this point I am just speculating like everybody else-although I said at the time that I would not be so fast in judging my friend and comrade Willy.

But did the composition of the Supreme Court at the time have anything to do with that shocking decision?

Three of the former Supreme Court judges have since left office.

The Supreme Court presided over by Maraga has been replenished.

Have these additions contributed to the September first historic judgment?

I would like to think so.

David Maraga, although considered conservative by many, is above all, regarded as morally upright. The Deputy Chief Justice I am told, has some personal connections with a high ranking official from Jubilee circles that I will not name-but she is a progressive woman who is very much aware of the gender agenda and other democratic issues. Justice Lenaola has a good record of human rights. If you add to that Smokin Wanjala’s history in academia and Mohamed Ibrahim’s CV under Moi you can surmise how these people-the Chief Justice, his deputy, Smokin, Lenaola and possibly Ibrahim could have outweighed Njoki Ndungu, whose dissent was almost a carbon copy of lawyer Ngatia’s arguments and arch conservative Ojwang’s right wing arguments.

Look folks, I am not a lawyer and very far from Nairobi so what I am saying here could be far fetched.

But I am appealing to my readers to pay attention more to history than religion; more to political science than to psychobabble.

Who knows if the Supreme Court paid more attention to what Raila, NASA and many Kenyans were saying that 2017 was a SECOND CHANCE for the apex court to redeem its tattered image?

We have to remember that members of the judiciary are not Ugandan, Chinese, Swazi, Canadian or Irish.

All the members of the Supreme Court are Kenyans who, let us presume, voted on August 8th and read about brutal slaying of Musando, the death of innocent children and body bags flung from helicopters.

Maybe, there is an off chance that they remembered the carnage that the country has gone through-all of them having living memory of Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi, Mwai Kibaki, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto.

Perhaps a thought floated across their heads of Tom Mboya, J.M. Kariuki, Masinde Muliro, Alexander Muge, Me Katilili, Koitalel or Pio Gama Pinto.

Or maybe not.

But I am trying to persuade my skeptical readers that history could have a role to play in arriving at making that historic decision which has already entered Kenyan history books.

For that, as I pen off, I would like to take my hat off Hon. David Maraga-Chief Justice & President of the Court; Hon. Lady Justice Philomena Mbete Mwilu, Deputy Chief Justice & Vice President of the Court; Hon. Mr. Justice Mohamed Khadhar Ibrahim; Hon. Justice Smokin Wanjala and Hon. Justice Isaac Lenaola.

[jakaswanga]

THE SWEETEST WET DREAM

WANTED: EXORCISTS!

I had a sweet dream. A very sweet dream. It was an intellectual wet dream. Their Lordships, distinguished amicus curii, counsellors and learned friends, were resolved to indulge us in a historic matter. This had been brought to litigation and appeal, and final resolve, before the red-robed eminences who, like God, their Judgement suffers no appeal. –-supreme, like the name of the court they head!

The question was, and is that elephant ever present in every sitting of the supreme court. That elephant which stands piling dung in the court, blowing foul winds of contempt as its appreciation of the ever farcical proceedings.

That elephant, is the question of CHAPTER SIX, THE INTEGRITY CLAUSE, and its IMPORT into the constitution, to guide public office morality in the pretentious post-KANU Kenya!



My dream was, Justice Maraga, having called the country's bluff by annulling the 8/8 2017 General election on a matter of constitutional breach, had his bluff called too. –--A petition to host the best crop of Kenyan (and foreign friends of the law) lawyers, to submit in full thoracic glory and oracular flow, what the constitution of Kenya understands under integrity, too of public officials. The difinite interpretation operationalised.

We really have to know from the supreme court, whether a wheelbarrow price inflator thief like Ken Lusaka of Bungoma, has the constitutional integrity to hold public office in the THIRD republic, Anne Waiguru of the NYS scam, and, come to think of it, if those principals of Jubilee, Uhuruto, and those of NASA –-Rao, MDVD, Weta and Stevo, are constitutionally white washable ---in the 3RD republic!



I dreamt CJ David Maraga was game; he summoned all institutions in the land worth their trust in legal brains, to delegate to his court their cream, to argue out their constitutional and philosophical and legal best, to settle the case of this virtual elephant, messing the reputation of his court, and his toga.

And these institutes heeded the summon. And not for a circus!



There was senior counsel Paul Muite, his balding head unwigged with horse-hair, sternly showing all the law and thoughtful wisdom training and experience has impacted within his cranium. Professor PLO Lumumba, well known across the continent for eloquent progressive speeches motivating young Africans to rise to their mental bests in the service of Africa, found himself in the dock to indulge a taste of his own medicine –---oar unto the heavens orating and practicing the best definitions of integrity for Kenya!

Counsels Lucy Kaboni, Cyprian Wekesa, Sisule Diego, Paul Ilal, Erik Kivudo, Mr's. Mukele and Murunga, Okongo Omogeni …... Charles Kanjama ...… came in charged to kill.

Ken Ogeto, Munari, Ngatia, Katia Kigen ...…. and a host of the usual celebrity suspect lawyers, you know the kinds married to the mobutucratic Mafioso plundering Kenya, changed tact this day, racked their brains, shifted through their dormant to extinct consciences, to come up with concepts relevant to the matter before the court.

Should the Mpigs in the last parliament who served in the PAC, the now defeated but nominated notables Ababu Namwamba and Cecil Mbarire heading the pack, be prosecuted under the integrity clause? –--One looks at the reports of the Auditor General through those years and thinks, PAC? They slept the whole time on the job, then woke up to tell us dreamy tales of a hairdresser making off with three canters of cash-money from the Central Bank!



Would, that Opus Dei Boy had instead gone to SDA boys boarding! Then would he be a cat to catch the mice like these choir boys from Kisii!

There too were the usual tropical clowns whose politico-zoological Norma is AMICUS CURIAE. They never show any initiative in the main, but once there is life in the court, like parasites ever awake to a free meal, they stealth in, all the way to the vitals. This day they changed tact, I dreamt, on the way to Damascus, that Saul to Paul stuff, Professor Githu Muigai re-discovering his true worth, at interpreting law –---not being paid to switch off his mind the way he has been earning keep!

There was counsels Harrison Kinyanjui, Elias Mutuma, Steven Muenesi, Kaumba Samuel, Ben Korir, KiloKumu, Omwanza Ombati, SG Njee Muturi and The Grandstanding Mullah. Forced to deepen his think before a stern Maraga taking his orals, Ahmed's eyes so widened behind his huge goggles, the glasses became the speck painfully drowning in them.

-–-How much integrity –----the Oral examiner wanted to know his opinion---- did he think the KDF paratroopers who went berserk at Wagalla showed? and the deer got caught in the headlamps.



But his eminence and Supreme Court Chairman David Maraga, looked like Almighty Zeus would have, that day the gods gathered in counsel to break the deadlock on some grave issue affecting lowly mortals on Earth. To that date, the gods had become partisan, their dread oaths at the Styx not withstanding. This partisanship of the gods had led to situations where some declined to settle cases before them, leading to ten year stalemates like the Trojan war. (I tell you Judge Mo Ibrahim isn't the first Cameljudge.



His laziness is legendary, and it showed a mental lapse in Maraga's to have chosen him as one of the immortals to sit at the NASA petition. The camel promptly took French Leave, this time corrupting his doctor to call in sick!)

Anyway, the partisanship and rot of the Kenyan judiciary had led to the popularisation of the term KOTI BANDIA.



The professional organisation of the learned friends, wasn't much better.



Faced with all these weighty issues which threatened the credibility of Heaven as mortals debated alternatives to a corrupt heavenly bench, Zeus's head was splitting, the headache massive. It reminded him of the day he brought forth Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

Here is the scene of the birth, for dummies!



So too was the head of David Maraga, Nestor of the land, Solomon at law. The moral rudderlessness of Kenya was leading to the disintegration of the land. His namesake Dr. Ndii was the kind of doctor to throw away the baby with the bathtub. The Caesarean he proposed was a barbarian split, up to cutting the baby in half. Perhaps Dr. Ndii thought this last would be a Solomon bluff to bring the parents to their senses. But wise Maraga knew the callousness in the heart of these competing b!tches is beyond human mitigation, known no bounds neither by morality nor common sense. –-They would shrug, split the colonial baby and see if we care! We love Kenya so much, the more the better. And most Kenyans, largely indifferent, tired of theft and battered by the daily gruel of poverty, wouldn't care to hold it together or drift apart.

So Maraga did the Olympian thing!

But he just kicked the can down the street some!

An image which says it all: pretender morans who look for beasts to slay as rites of passage, why art thee?



Not so much as an elephant in the court as Satan in the land! –--wanted: exorcists!

[mank]

Greetings fellow wanajukwaa. I take my hat off to you, folks like the most wordy amigo Jakaswanga, Kamalet, OO, and all who jot here routinely and intermittently. I take leave from making excuses for my long hibernation. More importantly, all will note that a big thing has happened to shake me from hibernation.

I wont be making news, I believe, when I state that after Kenyans went to ballot boxes in millions in August, the decision they seemed to have made turned out not to be acceptable to four of them, the four who in the end matter most. It sounds outrageous, to anyone who considers it the electorates' voice the outcome that the court overturned. Was it, or was it not? How do we know if it was, or it wasn't?

I wish I was impressed that the elections were fraudulently executed. As soon as the elections were over though, independent observers told us that the elections were clean! Unadulterated!

Even some NASA high-fliers came out with inward looking narratives of why their top candidate lost, and why the Jubilee counter candidate won. It sounded like a fair battle just concluded. Even the NASA candidate seemed to be accepting the outcome ... but only for a short time. All changed.

Two judges of the supreme court would not join in the ruling that the presidential elections should be done a fresh. Just why did they not? By the way, would they have gone along if the other four were calling for a recount instead? Has anything been said about this? Did the Supreme Court deliberate on a recount at all, or did it go for a repeat election from start?

Why a new election? Were there credible charges that vote casting itself was improper? I am unaware of that? Why is there so much empty space between the nature of the grievance and the judgement?

I have heard before that everyone has a price. Supreme Court judges would not have a price, would they? And could there have been a willing buyer, if they were willing to sell out? I wonder!

Sorry my Jukwaa mates, but i have to say, the Supreme Court ruling seems to me arbitrary and capricious at best, and subversive at worst.

[kamalet]

Welcome back Mank....long time and we all hope you have been well.

Perhaps one sober reflection of this ruling is carried in this this article in the Standard Newspaperwhich very well asks and attempts to answer your concerns.

Justice Maraga did a Pontius Pilate on Kenyans and hopes he can get away with it!!!!

I am currently in the land of Robert Mugabe and it is inevitable that this petition ruling came up for discussion. Whilst they Zims have a rather cruel approach to the decision - something like the ruling would have been written for Maraga and if a Zim judge had ruled as Maraga did, he would probably be gone to the land of moles and termites. But we are Kenyan and have a more civil way of dealing with such! More seriously, they too cannot fathom how a problem in the transmission of results would lead to nullification of the will of the voter especially where no evidence of fraud by the voter was canvassed!!

This decision will certainly open a door to reflection on the role of the judiciary in the lives of Kenyans and how the constitution can be changed to give you and I the confidence that any matter before any of the good judges will be handled judiciously!

[mank]

Thanks, Kamale. It has been a long time indeed. I have been well overall, but with a full life, flavoured with the various elements of middle age. I would not want to complain.

It was a pleasure to read the Standard Newspaper article. It amazes me that many people think that the Supreme Court's decision was a sign of progress for Kenya. Clearly the Supreme Court abused its mandate of a final judge, in making and judging over a case that that was not before it. A decision by an institution with the power of a supreme court should be so well thought out and articulated that even those inclined by any factors to disagree with it would find it a challenge to disagree. In this case it is the supreme court that seems to have difficulties articulating what led it to the ruling.