A change is a-coming

RSC Omollo, Emanuel O'Kubasu, Samuel Bosire and Joseph Nyamu have been weighed by Sharad Rao's Judges and Magistrates Vetting Board and they have been found wanting. Mr Rao, a former Deputy Public Prosecutor, and his colleagues are serving notice on serving members of the Judiciary that the impunity of their past is catching up with them and that there isn't a rock under which they will hide that won't get turned over, leaving them exposed. Mr Justice Omollo, Kenya's senior-most appellate judge, is notorious in the manner he runs his court. There isn't a practicing advocate who has not experienced his acerbic tongue; there are quite a few who have alleged that Justice Omollo's rulings did not meet the standards to which we all pay lip service. It is his misfortune that the Vetting Board has pored over his record and exposed it for what it is. Now he and his three colleagues are out in the cold, their benefits gone forever.

Justice Aaron Ringera's Radical Surgery was a fiasco. Even the good judge will admit it today that in the absence of a firm legal and constitutional foundation, he had too free a hand in the manner in which he decided who would go and who would remain. Philip Waki, one of the appeal court's judges cleared by Mr Rao's Board, was once a victim of Ringera's surgery and had it not been for his tenacious pursuit of the right to clear his name, he would be out in the cold too and we would never have added "Waki Envelope" to Kenya's political lexicon.

The Rule of Law is a difficult concept for Kenya's high and mighty to grasp. Philip Moi, one of President Moi's sons, is being sued by his former wife for substantial amounts in missed maintenance payments. He is unwilling to pay and claims, incredulously, that he cannot afford his former wife's demands. Nancy Baraza, the suspended Deputy Chief Justice, is doing everything in her power to avoid being investigated by a tribunal for her conduct on New Year's Day. Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta is tenaciously holding onto his office regardless of the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head in the form of an ICC trial. Jakoyo Midiwo, the Gem ODM MP and Government Chief Whip, makes unsubstantiated allegations that there is a conspiracy to assassinate the Prime Minister and then does everything in his power to avoid facing the law for wasting police time.

Martha Karua, the indefatigable Gichugu MP, and Ahmed Issack Hassan, the Chairman of the IEBC, have entered into a slanging match over the date of the next general election. Martha Karua, quite reasonably, argues that elections are never held after a Parliamentary term but during it. Mr Hassan, equally reasonably, argues that the High Court gave him great latitude to set the election date, latitude he has exercised to fix it for March 2013. Both claim that the rule of law guides their actions. Mr Rao, quite rightly too, has upended this cozy disregard for the law and the rule of law manifested by our leaders. Now that even the President of the Court of Appeal is facing dire legal circumstances and the Deputy President of the Supreme Court is being investigated by a tribunal for what many of her ilk would consider a minor issue, the high and mighty had better re-examine their place in the totem pole and adjust accordingly.

The Constitution declares rather breezily that the people of Kenya hold all sovereign power and that elected and appointed officials are mere delegates of the people. Quite clearly this message is yet to sink into George Saitoti's head. When his police officers use what many consider to be unjustifiably excessive force to break up a political meeting, and when many suspect that the reason he is doing so is to prevent the rise of another power centre in the Mount Kenya region, he makes a mockery of the sovereign power of the people. So too does the Minister for Medical Services who dreams of fancy new hospitals for the dying rich but refuses to pay his lowly doctors and nurses what they deserve nor get them the materiel they need for their operations. And so too does the Chairman of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission who spends more time writing reports and making recommendations on what to do about highly ethnicised public institutions instead of prosecuting the men and women who have consistently perpetuated a culture of impunity and a callous disregard for merit or what is good for their institutions (it is no longer funny that the University of Nairobi is seen as a 'Luo' university while Kenyatta University is seen as a 'Kikuyu' university).

Change comes as sure as the sun rises. It is now apparent that some of the changes are going to be received with skepticism, sometimes outright hostility, but there is no denying that Kenyans are optimistic that these changes will be seen through to the end. If the overwhelming approval over the dismissal of the four judges is anything to go by, it is only a matter of time before civil servants start to feel the heat over their sins of commission and omission.