Budget Wars: Why CJ Maraga was attacked on Twitter

Twitter users spent a better part of yesterday to attack Chief Justice David Maraga over his displeasure on the decision by the government to cut the Judiciary’s budget by 50 per cent.

Twitter uders queried the manner in which the institution has been handling the ongoing construction of court buildings, while others castigated whoever started the #SomeoneTell Maraga hashtag that became among the top trends in social media.

In some of the tweets, a number of people expressed their concern in the manner in which the corruption case against former Transport minister Michael Kamau was handled.

It is this case that saw the collapse of 125 high profile cases involving public funds worth millions of shillings on a technicality.

Apart from corruption, other issues raised included politicians being given anticipatory bails by the courts, how the courts handled the corruption case against former Transport minister Michael Kamau that saw the collapse of more than 50 cases.

#SomeoneTellMaraga kennedy Gichuru‏ @gichurukenny The Court of Appeal ruling stopping the prosecution of former Transport secretary Michael Kamau has dragged a number of corruption cases dating back to 2015.

On the ongoing construction of court buildings in the country, some of those who were against the hashtag said the project was aimed at decongesting prisons and reducing backlog of cases.

#SomeoneTellMaraga Carol Kamau‏ @carolfaith05 This trend has been created to distract Kenyans from issues like providing funds to courts to reduce the overpopulated prison system we presently have...people be woke.

In his statement on Tuesday, Maraga said the Judiciary had requested for Sh31.2 billion but were given only Sh14.5 billion, a figure he said will affect the institution’s operations.

Currently, there are more than 20 ongoing court building construction projects across the country with some being 29 per cent funded by the World Bank.

“More than 70 per cent of court construction projects will stall following the budget cut and expiry of World Bank funding in December,” he said.

However, other people viewed the budget cut as Jubilee government’s commencement on its promise to revisit the manner in which the Supreme Court handled the August 2017 election petition.

#SomeoneTellMaraga Kinyua Abala‏ @AbalaKinyua If we are going to use budgeting to settle political scores, we are deeply in trouble. I thought Jubilee got over nullification of the 8/8/17 election. Now stupid Kenyans are attacking the Judiciary & they are the ones who suffer in courts when things stall.

But others took sides with the Judiciary, saying the hashtag was aimed at discrediting the Judiciary over matters that were beyond it.

The World Bank’s Sh10.5 billion for the construction of courts project is coming to an end in December and the Judiciary had sought for an extension of time to complete the buildings.

So far, only 20 per cent of works is remaining in more than 10 buildings that are under the five year project funded by the bank through the Judicial Performance Improvement Programme (JPIP) loan.

The loan is to mature within 40 years with a grace period of 10 years, was aimed at constructing 30 courts (10 High Court and 20 magistrates) in a bid to bring services closer to the people.

The Judiciary’s communication department told the Saturday Standard that they were not going to respond to the comments made by the twitter users.