If you love justice, defend Judiciary

Chief Justice David Maraga, flanked by his deputy Philomena Mwilu, addresses the media regarding the political onslaught against judges owing to the presidential election petition ruling, on September 19, 2017 in Nairobi. Threatening the Judiciary is, therefore, threatening justice, without which life will taste like ashes. PHOTO | KANYIRI WAHITO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Much as we need justice as we do oxygen, one cannot have justice without rule of law and an independent Judiciary.
  • As the conservator, manager and distributor of space in this forest, an independent Judiciary must be jealously protected.

For people who have suffered injustice in the hands of an emasculated Judiciary, any time they see its independence under attack they must come to its rescue.

It is reasonable for “one who has been bitten by a snake to jump upon the sight of a rope”.

Without an independent Judiciary, there can be no justice.

Without justice, there can be no life worthy living.

SUPREME COURT

Yet when attacked the Judiciary cannot fight back; all people who love justice must come to its rescue.

Though like the work of everyone else court verdicts should be open to criticism, the Judiciary must be respected and its independence never breached or it will lose the innocence and purity that permit it to arbitrate among us.

There is a national debate going on over the September 1 judgment of the Supreme Court that declared the August 8 presidential election invalid, null and void and ordered a fresh poll within 60 days.

REMOVAL OF JUDGES

In it, President Uhuru Kenyatta strongly disagrees with the ruling but agrees to abide by it because of his respect for a greater principle of the rule of law.

For that he deserves support.

Unfortunately, some of the President’s supporters are not as wise.

Whereas he is preaching peace, they are stoking the embers of war.

To people like Nyeri Town MP Ngunjiri Wambugu — a first-time legislator — disagreeing with a judicial decision also means not obeying it, kicking judges out of court, violating the rule of law and terminating the independence of the Judiciary.

RULE OF LAW
But this is dangerous because it also means ending democratic governance based on three equal but complementary arms of government — the Judiciary, Legislature and Executive — followed by anarchy, removal of judges’ security of tenure and return of dictatorship. 

As in the days of one-party autocracy, judges will be at the beck and call of the Executive, which will dictate their judgments.

Much as we need justice as we do oxygen, one cannot have justice without rule of law and an independent Judiciary.

Threatening the Judiciary is, therefore, threatening justice, without which life will taste like ashes.

ARBITER

Fighting the Judiciary is akin to shooting oneself in the foot: None of us can be immune to injustice or oppression, which we can only eradicate with justice.

An independent Judiciary is the purveyor of justice.

When we are oppressed or denied freedom or other democratic rights, we go to the independent Judiciary for cure and redress.

How, then, can we fight it?

Though Judiciary be a partner of the Executive and Legislature in governance, when things go wrong, we run to the Judiciary to put them right.

HAVEN

Other than interpreting the law and dispensing justice, the Judiciary also supervises how legally other arms of government function while also checking its own excesses through its appellate system.

For that, the Judiciary is the only institution with authority to contradict power without a backlash.

In Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More cautions that just people must defend laws, rule of law and independence of the Judiciary as the three are a forest, which gives refuge when the weak and the oppressed need protection, redress and justice.

INDEPENDENT
Although it is the poor and the weak who mostly seek protection of the law, any powerful person who dares to clear this forest to deny his enemies cover and protection must know that he will have no protection when the devil will chase him.

When the devil gives chase, none is safe outside the ‘forest’ of the Judiciary.

As the conservator, manager and distributor of space in this forest, an independent Judiciary must be jealously protected.

But although an independent Judiciary is the protector of rights, for it to protect us we must first protect it.

COLLECTIVE EFFORT
When we see the Supreme Court under siege, we must not think of the crisis as their exclusive problem and none of our business.

For the struggle between the Executive and the Judiciary is like the mousetrap that catches both the target and those who are not.

The farmer set up the trap targeting mice that were eating his millet.

But it ended up killing unintended targets in the cockerel, the goat and the cow, which had refused to help the mice to remove the trap, as well as the snake and the farmer, who were not targeted.

Surprisingly, the only survivors were the mice — the intended targets!  

Mr Wamwere is an author and former MP. [email protected].