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{
    "id": 647722,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/647722/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 195,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Oyugi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 444,
        "legal_name": "Augostinho Neto Oyugi",
        "slug": "augostinho-neto-oyugi"
    },
    "content": "The Judiciary has done some commendable work over the past three or four years after the promulgation of the Constitution but it is also doing very badly because people still do not have trust in the overall court system. Whereas we praise them for the good work done, there is still room for improvement. If at all you are in the Judiciary, people need to believe in the court system. One of my colleagues has said it very well that the Chief Justice does not believe in his own institution. The fact that the Chief Justice of Kenya has told us that he has a problem in trying to streamline the Judiciary and still worries that the level of corruption in the Judiciary is fairly very high is disturbing. Even though we are giving them an independent Fund, we want to see some integrity on the part of the Judiciary, in a manner that will give confidence to the court system. Kenyans think that you can still buy justice at the courts. That is a disturbing scenario. If you have a country where the institutions that are supposed to be dispensing justice are institutions that you cannot believe in, the only thing that you will be moving forward towards is anarchy. Whatever the Judiciary can do, both the JSC and the Chief Justice before he leaves office, should be to give us a Judiciary that Kenyans can believe in. As Parliament, we are doing our role by making sure that they have the money that they need so that they are autonomous. Because the law has already made them autonomous, they need to do everything else to have their independence. I have a problem with two clauses in this Bill. The first one is Clause 12 which gives the Chief Registrar the powers to delegate to any officer of the Judiciary the powers of an Accounting Officer. Whereas that is possible to do within the meaning of the law, I speak with a bit of experience after what we saw when the last Chief Registrar left office. There are moments when sometimes the buck has to stop somewhere. If the Chief Registrar is the one supposed to account for the funds like this Bill anticipates, I have a problem when you say that he or she can also delegates that function in terms of the authority to incur expenses. You will have people incurring expenses with delegated powers or not then someone runs away with particular responsibilities. Whereas it is possible within the meaning of the law to have various officers working together, it would be a dangerous provision to give, as provided in Clause 13, that the Chief Registrar can give the authority to incur expenses to somebody else. Unless we think it through properly, that will be a fairly dangerous provision in my view."
}