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{
    "id": 1122173,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1122173/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 306,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Omogeni",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13219,
        "legal_name": "Erick Okong'o Mogeni",
        "slug": "erick-okongo-mogeni"
    },
    "content": "of appointment of judges from the Executive. If I give the history of Kenya, during the precolonial days, the appointment of judges was a preserve of Executive. The President had a free hand on picking who was to occupy the position of Chief Justice, a judge of Court of Appeal and judge of the High Court. That position continued in the early days of our Independence. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, even after we created a body called the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), the precursor to the current JSC, still it was full of presidential appointees because the Attorney-General used to be a member. Judges of the Court of Appeal used to be members, judges of the High Court and then the Chief Justice. The Chief Justice under the former Constitution used to be an appointee of the Executive. The process was never transparent. It was opaque and based on political patronage and nobody really understood how judges were picked. I will give an interesting story on what happened when I was serving as the Chairperson of the Law Society of Kenya (LSK). I once got a call from the late Chief Justice Evans Gicheru that the President was requesting for names of candidates to be appointed judges. Therefore, the LSK should also send in proposals. There was no legal framework on how these people are picked. It was a fairly opaque system based on I think who knows who. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, excitedly I called my council and we came up with a number of names on candidates to be picked as judges. Indeed, one of the lawyers from Eldoret received a call and he was told to come to Nairobi because he was needed in State House tomorrow to be appointed as a judge. He received a ticket from the Government from the Judiciary. He was told to come with one person and he said he was to come with his wife. A ticket was sent for him and his wife. He was told when you come to Nairobi, you will find we have booked a hotel for you. He came to Nairobi, had a hotel booked for him and he was told come at 9.30 a.m. to the Chambers of honourable Chief Justice then he went to State House and be sworn in as a judge. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, that lawyer took the flight from Eldoret to Nairobi. He slept with his wife having told his friends I will be sworn in as a judge tomorrow. When he woke up at 9.30 a.m., he went to the Chief Justice Chambers, but he was told the President had removed his name and replaced it with somebody else. You can imagine. That is the kind of system that we had. He was traumatised. He tried to go to court and say that he had already been picked, but there was no legal framework to govern a transparent professional way of picking judges. In fact, it is that case that informed the campaign by the Law Society of Kenya (LSK). I was a member of the LSK when we did this chapter on judiciary. That is why we pushed for an open and transparent process of picking judges. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we had a big debate with my colleague Sen. Wako when we were debating this chapter on judiciary. I remembered at one time Sen. Wako told us as LSK that how can you think in your normal heads that a person who wants to be a Chief Justice can sit down to write an application to JSC to be appointed a Chief Justice? He said this is something that should be done by the President. The President knows all the lawyers. He can decide who is befitting to occupy that position."
}