After 20 years, Wako serves last days as Kenya's AG

HEZRON NJOROGE | NATION
Mr Amos Wako, Kenya’s longest serving Attorney General.

What you need to know:

  • Attorney General leaves haunted by ghosts of Anglo Leasing and Goldenberg

Amos Wako could be serving his last week as Attorney-General after 20 years of controversial service to the country.

Daily Nation sources speculated that President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga will make changes that will see Mr Wako replaced at least a week before the constitutional deadline of August 27 to allow his successor some time to settle in.

It is also expected that the President, and particularly the Prime Minister, will use the opportunity to reshuffle Cabinet ministers that could see some big names out of government.

Mr Wako, described by for US ambassador Smith Hempstone in his book, Rogue Ambassador, as brilliant but cynical, is Kenya’s longest serving AG.

He has had a good record of writing laws, especially being part of the Committee of Experts (CoE) that wrote the Constitution, but a very poor one in enforcing them.

So harshly has his record of prosecuting criminals, including the white-collar criminals in high office, been judged that the Obama administration took the precipitate step of banning him from travelling to the US, accusing him of being the father of impunity in Kenya.

His trademark smile, in good times and bad, will be one of the hallmarks of his time, as will the fact that he was the AG who, together with President Kibaki, gave Kenyans a new Constitution on August 27 last year.

President Moi appointed him on May 13, 1991, at a time when Mr Wako had impeccable academic and professional credentials and an undisputed reputation in the human rights field.

In his maiden speech in Parliament on July 2, 1991, Mr Wako described his new job as one with “onerous duties, big challenges and immense responsibilities” and went ahead to offer an unreserved loyalty pledge to the former President.

“A characteristic of the rule of law is that no man, except the President, is above the law,” Mr Wako told MPs back then in a poignant statement that went on to define his reverence for the presidency “both in word and deed”.

Some 20 years later, Mr Wako exits as legal advisor to government at a time when the sun is setting on the absolute powers of the President. His powers to prosecute have been given to the Director of Public Prosecution, cutting the clout of the AG’s Chambers.

Even so, his devotion to the presidency has helped him navigate the treacherous waters of Kenya’s politics, surviving where few would.

As he bows out, Mr Wako knows that his prophecy about the burdens of his job came to pass, given the criticism he has lately been under over delays in the implementation of Kenya’s one-year-old Constitution.

But then it is upon the public to judge if he “conducted himself with honour” or if his office was “as meticulous as possible” in the legislative process during his two-decade tenure.

While he can take pride in having sat in the CoE and for handing President Kibaki the document on Promulgation Day (August 27, 2010); he is yet to tell Kenyans why it took so long to deliver the reforms he promised when he got into office.

Like Justice Minister Mutula Kilonzo, who has been hugely criticised for backing former President Moi’s regime but is now spearheading the law review process, Mr Wako has on occasion flexed the odd reform muscle.

Through State Counsel Wanjiku Mbiyu, he rejected the first appointment of the Chief Justice, the Deputy CJ, his successor for AG, and that of the Director of Public Prosecutions, terming them as unprocedural and illegal. President Kibaki, who had picked the names unilaterally, was forced to withdraw the list.

As he puts on the sheepskin of reforms after years of being the leopard of anti-reform — to the extent of being called the “embodiment of the phenomenon of impunity in Kenya, by the UN special emissary on human rights” — Mr Wako must be hoping that the tumultuous early part of his tenure will be forgotten.

Not so soon. MPs, particularly Mr John Mbadi of Gwassi, and the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution (CIC), have been on his neck, accusing him of being one of the impediments to the rollout of the Constitution.

Rare public display of anger

At a meeting with the Constitution Implementation Oversight Committee, Mr Wako, in a rare public display of anger, dismissed Mr Mbadi as “one of those who talk too much without thinking”. He then turned on the CIC and dismissed it as being “ignorant” of the legislative process.

But his professional peers can’t wait for him to quit. In the Nairobi Law Monthly, the publisher, Mr Ahmednasir Abdullahi, was unapologetic: “Depart we say you Amos Wako…in the name of God go!”

Perhaps, Mr Wako has redeemed his image a little from that of saboteur-in-chief in the country’s long and tortuous attempts to write a new Constitution.
He is an old hand at review politics. The run-up to the 2005 referendum is one of the events that saw him lose big-time after the country rejected the proposed Constitution — the eponymous “Wako draft”.

He was vilified for and accused of watering down the Bomas draft when he picked a section of MPs and part of the then Constitution of Kenya Review Commission, whisked them off to Kilifi, from where he came back with a hugely altered document.

Then, those opposed to the changes argued that the AG had gone against the wishes of the people, who had “written the Constitution” at a national conference held at the Bomas of Kenya.