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{
    "id": 366306,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/366306/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 248,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Kaluma",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1565,
        "legal_name": "George Peter Opondo Kaluma",
        "slug": "george-peter-opondo-kaluma"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Speaker, Sir, my thanks also go to the Chair of the Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs. The process of vetting of judicial officers, as all hon. Members know, is a process anchored in the Constitution and the Vetting of Judges and Magistrates Act, passed in 2011. As a requirement under those laws, the Vetting Board must have in its membership three foreign persons. This is something that needed to be clarified because some hon. Members could be wondering why we are seeking foreigners in the process. It is a matter that worked the mind of the nation when the Act was being legislated and I remember debates about the need to depoliticize the composition of the board and its workings and the need to have a very impartial process recognizing that this was a process that was attacking the entire Judiciary and everybody who was serving as a judicial officer or in any other capacity in the Judiciary. As we all know, as a national House, that process has stalled for some time because of lack of the foreign component in the membership of the board. That has not been a tidy situation for those who were the subject matter of the vetting process. We have a number of applications for review of decisions previously made by the board which can only be undertaken by the full board not sub-committees. In fact, even in terms of the committees of the board, each committee must have a foreign person sitting in it for that impartiality. Those decisions are still pending there. The process, as far as I know, all judges of the High Court, Court of Appeal and those brothers and sisters sitting as judges in the Supreme Court have been vetted. A few magistrates, hardly ten, have also been vetted and so we have the bulk of vetting process waiting. We want to, in moving this Motion before the House and supporting it, urge that the House considers the anxiety those Kenyans who are the subject of the vetting process are going through. It has not been easy for the judicial officers sitting not knowing whether they will be permitted to continue to serve the nation in their judicial capacities or whether they should be leaving to think of other ways to pursue their careers. We, therefore, as a Committee, on the directions given by the House, took the persons being presented to the House today through the approval process. All Members of this House have looked through their CVs. It is amazing how qualified people are in the legal profession. We have former chief justice; in fact two are former chief justices; one served additionally as a director of public prosecutions. Others have had solicitations. Special appreciation and acknowledgment for accomplishment has been written and dedicated by the whole profession to them. There was worry in some Members of the Committee that maybe we needed more than these people but we were satisfied that it would be perverse to imagine somebody of the calibre of a former chief justice; somebody of the rich academic and professional background we are seeing in these two gentleman and a lady to be coming all the way from their country, for instance, with a partial or biased mind to fix one magistrate out of the pool of over 3,000 we are going to vet. So, we considered that and we recommended that these are people who should be approved by the House for the vetting process."
}