Why does justice appear permanently elusive?

By Timothy Bosire

Kenya: What is justice? Does justice really exist? Is justice an illusion? Is there any place in the world where true justice has prevailed? Is Kenya capable of actualizing justice or is it ever a mirage? Justice, justice, justice! Justice all over... justice nowhere!

As well chronicled in the holy Bible, Jesus was subjected to extreme injustice that led to his extra-judicial killing in Jerusalem after Pontius Pilate found him innocent.

But shockingly, they carried out a rigged vote to determine whether he were to be executed or set free with the only voters being his malicious accusers; John the Baptist had his head severed by a king who had not carried out a just case to determine his guilt.

Closer home, injustice is littered all over. From the inhumane capture of innocents subsequent sale into slavery, the dehumanizing vagaries of colonial exploitation and torture, European settler economy of forced labour, killings of freedom fighters and African nationalists, the framed prosecution and jailing of freedom heroes stand out.

Later as if we were a cursed lot, citizens of newly-liberated nations mostly made up of Third World countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America walked straight into a disaster of runaway injustice that ruined populations through police brutality, poorly performing criminal justice system, institutionalised corruption, economic plunder and bloody dictatorships by homegrown leaderships in addition to economic sabotage by the developed world.

Surprisingly, even the more socio-economically empowered nations have proved vulnerable to this menace of injustice.

In many societies it is manifested in political persecution, religious intolerance, racial and class discrimination, malicious or criminally-generated lack of basic infrastructure and social amenities in deprived neighbourhoods, negative ethnicity that permeates the entire national fabric and manifests itself in cancerous/antagonistic political-cum-economic competitions.

In all these groups or individuals who by some quirk of fate enjoy a certain degree of advantage have meted all manner of injustices to their competitors with abandon, leaving in their wake ruined nations, broken families, broken societies, traumatised individuals/societies and broken lives.

The end results have included creation of instability in nations, insecure neighbourhoods and countries, collapse of nations, civil war, military coups and war.

Yet if justice prevailed, order and prosperity would automatically prevail and society would stabilise and flourish. Everybody knows this, yet nobody has worked up a formula to mainstream justice and permanently implant it in human society.

Maybe justice is a rumour. A Utopian ideal, out of this world. Yet it surprises that the more it eludes us, the more Mankind pursues it. Could all mankind be so collectively insane as to sustain a burning desire for something that is permanently slippery and unachievable?

Last week Kenya’s Judiciary exploded in controversy over pursuit of justice gone awry over a bid to put in place infrastructure for judicial officers and streamline operations by beefing up the human resource and fine-tuning operational relationships amongst judicial officers and support staff infringed on justice hence committing some unacceptable injustice to the country’s judicial apparatus.

Separation of powers

The subsequent laundry of dirty linen in public popped up the question of  corruption and abuse of office.  Then the drama quickly drifted into yet another injustice to the country’s architecture of democracy built on separation of powers between the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. A parliamentary committee summoned the warring parties in the Judiciary with a view to resolving the dispute.

Legal experts have called Parliament unjust as it infringes on the Judiciary, thus undermining the Constitution which underscores the separation of powers between the arms of government.

If injustices can be committed in the course of pursuit for justice, then what is the nature of justice? When will justice just prevail naturally without convolution and confusion?

I ask all these questions as one major victim of injustice during elections. Many times I vied for Kitutu-Masaba parliamentary seat and ensured full adherence to the rules of the game because I am a firm believer in electoral justice.

But unknown to me some forces and vested interests would unleash all manner of opportunistic maneuvers including shortcuts and rigging to illegally hand the seat to their chosen candidate. Ultimately, the voters and I would be deprived with impunity.

Could such dark forces be behind the persecution of people accused of sins of omission or commission in the normal discharge of duty? What a strange, sudden, unexplained explosion all over an institution we thought was about to start delivering the justice this country so badly needs!

In my case, I was particularly surprised by the ease perpetrators of these electoral injustices in Kitutu-Masaba executed their schemes unchallenged. We would always question these and table the evidence of these injustices to the authorities but they would always give us the cold shoulder.

Even after voters vote overwhelmingly, why do some institutions exhibit a strange appetite for abdication?

The people have given the State and other institutions adequate resources and laws to enforce justice. Yet they fail them every day. Who then should shoulder this burden of watering the tree of justice in our society? Or do we leave it to fate? Was there a time when people gave up on the hope for justice and thought God had forsaken them? Is this such a time?

Writer is Member of Parliament for Kitutu-Masaba Constituency.

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