JSC snubs key Parliamentary meeting

By Alphonse Shiundu

NAIROBI, KENYA: The Judicial Service Commission snubbed a meeting with a key parliamentary committee and instead sent a lawyer to talk to the MPs about postponing the same meeting.

The Justice and Legal Affairs Committee chairman Samuel Chepkonga (Ainabkoi) dismissed the lawyer and warned the commissioners that they will have to live with the choice of not showing up for the meeting.

Senior Counsel Paul Muite was not even given a chance to sit in the committee meeting. Instead the MPs said, they were unwilling to talk to him, because, he was not a commissioner with the JSC.

Muite sat in the reception at Nairobi’s Continental House as the MPs haggled about whether he should be let in or not on the Fifth Floor of the same building. In the end, the MPs sent a clerk to the committee to tell Muite to take a walk.

“The lawyer will not be granted any opportunity to speak before the committee because we had only invited commissioners. This is a very substantive matter which cannot be delegated. Paul Muite will be informed in a very gracious manner that this committee will not give him audience, but we thank him for attempting to show up,” said Chepkonga.

The stung MPs said the JSC had flouted directive by National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi which ordered that anyone who is summoned by a House Committee ought to personally appear and plead to have the matter rescheduled.

The MPs said they were working on a clock –the Speaker gave them 14 days to process a petition—and they were unwilling to shift the deadline to accommodate the JSC’s request for a new date. The deadline for the report is Thursday next week.

The House Committee had written to the JSC on October 17 to schedule yesterday’s meeting, to address issues in a petition that wants six commissioners removed from the commission.

Mr Riungu Nicholas Mugambi filed the petition with the National Assembly on October 4 seeking the National Assembly’s approval that Ahmednassir Abdullahi, Samuel Kobia, Christine Mango, Mohammed Warsame, Emily Ominde and Florence Mwangangi ought to be dismissed from the JSC.

But Muite, in his letter, said the commissioners were not individually culpable for the “violations of the Constitution” that Mugambi had listed in his petition.

Mugambi, in his petition, says the JSC commissioners encroached on the mandate of the Chief Registrar of the Judiciary Gladys Shollei by “purporting to approve or disapprove expenditure of monies allocated to the Judiciary thereby causing inordinate delay in processing of salaries for judicial staff” contrary to article 161(2)(c) of the Constitution

Mugambi also noted in his petition that the commissioners directed payments to be done by persons who are not authorized to do so.

“In relation to the matters raised in the petition, the six commissioners were acting in their capacity as commissioners of JSC on specific instructions/directions of the JSC. The matter therefore concerns the entire JSC as an institution and not just the six commissioners,” Muite wrote in his letter to the MP, which was received in the National Assembly on October 24 (Thursday).

The inference from Muite’s letter was that having the Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, his deputy and all the JSC commissioners appear before a House committee had “weighty constitutional implications” and that was why the JSC needed more time for “reflection and consideration”.

“The Chief Justice and the JSC are anxious to avoid any potential constitutional crisis,” said Muite and warned that there should be “mutual respect and constraint” in the relations among the three arms of government.

The MPs said they will go ahead and make a recommendation on whether the six commissioners were fit to sit in the JSC.

“We were just trying to be nice, to obey the rules of natural justice,” said Agostinho Neto (Ndhiwa).

MPs also declined to hear the former Chief Registrar of the Judiciary Gladys Shollei, who was at Continental House ready to give her evidence, but she was also denied a chance to appear before the committee.

The committee also met Dennis Kariuki from the Kenya National Audit Office and gave him until Tuesday next week to file a report on any breaches in law in the approval of expenditure within the Judiciary.

“We are not asking you whether there were any losses or not. We’re interested in your opinion about the legality of who approved the payments,” said Chepkonga.

“We want to know if money was spent without the authority of the accounting officer, who is the Chief Registrar of the Judiciary,” added David Ochieng’ (Ugenya).