Drop kadhis courts, clerics insist

• Christians in fresh threat to scuttle law review if courts remain in the draft

The constitutional review faces a fresh challenge as Christians on Monday threatened again to scuttle the process unless Islamic courts were removed from the draft.

And the clerics also demanded the number of MPs be capped at 250 so that Kenyans don’t shoulder the burden of financing a bloated government.

“We state that if the draft constitution to be presented in the referendum does not reflect these cardinal principles, the Christians in Kenya shall reject it in total,” said the National Council of Churches of Kenya secretary-general, the Rev Peter Karanja.

He spoke on behalf of the Christian community in the country at a press conference in Nairobi.

The Rev Karanja was flanked by representatives from various churches and Christian organisations in the country.

“We are extremely opposed to the inclusion of kadhi’s courts in the constitution,” he said, adding that “the move was tantamount to dividing the nation on the basis of religion, and that it was a dangerous trend”.

“We should learn from the nations that have moved in that direction and suffered instability.”

This is not the first time the Christian community in the country is calling for the elimination of the courts from the new draft.

“But despite the consensus reported to have been reached on various issues by the Parliamentary Select Committee, we regret that they too perpetuated the mishandling of the issue.”

The leaders equally laid blame on the Committee of Experts, saying they took sides in the issue and gave themselves the responsibility to campaign for the kadhi’s courts. The courts have been in the Constitution all along without objections by the Christians.

But on Monday, the leaders said in 2004 they filed a case in the High Court, seeking the removal of the courts from the constitution. The judgment on the case has never been delivered although the hearings ended in February last year.