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{
    "id": 972187,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/972187/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 603,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kirinyaga Central, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Munene Wambugu",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13382,
        "legal_name": "John Munene Wambugu",
        "slug": "john-munene-wambugu"
    },
    "content": "Presently, if you are a practising lawyer or a litigant and you go to the environment and land court, for example, they have dates from May 2021 yet we are in March 2020. If you get a case in the environment and land court, you can only get a date next year. Are we really serving justice to the people of Kenya? This lack of proper funding of the Judiciary is unnecessary. It is a form of interference with the independence of the Judiciary because you cannot be independent if you do not have enough resources. The recommendation by the Committee that the Judiciary should be well-funded should be the way to go. Actually, with the Judiciary Fund, time has come when the Judiciary gets its own money directly from the Consolidated Fund without being at the whims of the Executive which releases the money when it wants and pleases. The other issue I would like to touch on is about digitisation of our courts. We have to digitise our courts going forward. It seems, much as there is not enough funding to do that, there is no much impetus to really and completely digitise our courts. The advantage of doing that is, first of all, you are going to ensure that the proceedings of the courts are accurate. For lack of a better word, some dishonest judges or magistrates sometimes do not record the proceedings the way they are supposed to. One has no way of ascertaining or knowing whether what you have said is what the court has recorded. With proper recording like the way we have the Hansard, if you deny whatever you say, it can always be pulled out. With proper recording, it will ensure that what was said in court is what the judge or magistrate recorded. The other advantage is that there will be quicker determination of the matters. It is because recording proceedings using the hand which is time consuming should be an issue of the past. The way things are going, the Judiciary must catch up or wake up or put more effort towards this issue. The other thing which is a bit disturbing and was noted by the Committee is having conflicting judgements from the same court. You will find that a court in Mombasa says this and another court in Nyeri says this yet it is almost a similar matter, principles and all that. So, I think our judges and magistrates need to be continually empowered on how they do their research and all that such that their judgements are uniform. Then you will be sure to get the same judgement as one in the Nyeri High Court if you are in the High Court of Kisumu. It is because justice if for all of us, whichever part of the country you come from. Although there is an Office of the Ombudsman in the Judiciary, there is no legal requirement. It is an office created administratively. I think it should be legislated such that it is in law that we must have such an office and what it is supposed to deal with. There was also the issue of management of cases. You will find that there are delays. There is no law apart from election petitions which determine the timelines of cases. That is an issue which the Judiciary should come up with in a proposed legislation. If they fail, maybe Parliament can take it up so that we know the timelines in any given type of case. One cannot be The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}