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{
    "id": 665082,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/665082/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 330,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wamatangi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 646,
        "legal_name": "Paul Kimani Wamatangi",
        "slug": "paul-kimani-wamatangi"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I rise to express my appreciation for the gesture by the Chief Justice to come to this House and give the speech that he gave. I also wish to congratulate him for the achievements albeit they may not be satisfactory according to all our expectations. Let me also note that the Chief Justice has got an enviable Curriculum Vitae (CV). Yesterday, our Speaker took a good three minutes just to go through the Chief Justice’s CV. That is a sign of accomplishments of a man who has ventured and tried to be somebody. Let me say at a personal level that I have been impressed by the humility with which the Chief Justice has discharged himself, especially on the trappings of power. I remember when the Chief Justice was appointed, I saw him arrive in his office carrying a back pack. He put his books down and settled down after having alighted from a limousine. Although we may not all be fully satisfied, he has tried to demystify the Judiciary. Moreso, we must admit that it is not impossible for him to leave that institution without some scars that he must have gotten in the quest of his venture and especially in the journey of reforms that he has tried to take the Judiciary through. Sometimes when we measure the achievements of a person, as we measure how high we expect that person to have gone, we forget to measure low that person may have brought that institution from. I think this is the case of the Chief Justice. He picked the Judiciary from an extremely low position as it has been described by most of the speakers here. I remember one time personally visiting one of the law courts in Kibera. When somebody’s phone rings, the magistrate calls the person and sends him to the cells. The magistrate does her business. She forgets that somebody had gone to receive a call. She goes home and the person stays in the cells for a whole week. When the magistrate comes back, she says that she forgot, just because the phone rang. That is the kind of judiciary we have had. We had a judiciary where judges were literally owned by individuals. You could tell that judge so and so belong to so and so. So, I think the Chief Justice, albeit there are dissatisfactions due to the nature of litigation, has tried. Litigation is really a competition of arguments. In that competition, it is natural that you will have one side that will feel that the expectations they had in a matter of interest were not achieved or they did not get justice, because before matters go to court, they are matters of good interest. Let me also take this opportunity to congratulate Justice Ibrahim. I see on 411 signals that he has been appointed to act as the President of the Supreme Court. I hope that this will lead us to a competitive process to replace the Chief Justice. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we must also acknowledge that the Chief Justice fought serious cartels during his tenure. We all know that there exit serious cartels in the Judiciary which have been active to the extent that they have been trying to determine who the next Chief Justice will be. The shenanigans that we have seen from the appointments and forceful eviction of some of the judges together with dismissal of some of the appointees are signs of things to come. As I finalise --- The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate"
}