Senate deserves no mercy from the Supreme Court
What you need to know:
- More advisory opinions from the Supreme Court can’t remedy personal flaws and leadership inadequacies or failures in the two houses. Other constitutional venues and options must be explored.
- Why does the Senate appreciate the courts only when squeezed by the National Assembly? Here is my petition and plea on why the Supreme Court should leave the Senate at the mercy of the National Assembly.
- Considering its past misbehaviour, the Supreme Court should not render an advisory opinion to a party which respects the law only when it is at a disadvantage.
“The conduct of the Republican party in this nomination is a remarkable indication of small intellect growing smaller.
They passed over… statesmen and able men, and they take up a fourth rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar” — The New York Herald, May 19, 1860, commenting on Abraham Lincoln’s nomination for president at the Republican National Convention.
Kenyans are expressing similar sentiments as expressed then by the New York Herald against Lincoln, when one looks at the raging wars between the National Assembly and the Senate. They are loudly asking how the President and his deputy could make such a big mistake in relation to the leadership they picked for both houses.
The world knows that Abraham Lincoln became a good and great man. Kenyans know that the leaders of the Senate and the National Assembly are unfit for office. Uhuru and Ruto’s nominees for the political leadership of the two houses have been a national calamity, a shameful charade that is cruelly in ascendancy and yet to reach its crescendo. They picked political dwarfs that have failed to appreciate that our constitutional ecosystem needs the delicate and professional care of sages.
The President and his Deputy have picked political dimwits with the cartoonish flare of an Ali Baba-like character to head the two houses. The result has been an excruciating national pain that refuses to ebb.
POLITICAL PING PONG
They turned both houses into a playground of national infamy where the leaders play an aimless political ping pong and members of the houses cheer them like a rowdy mob in a football stadium.
The latest twist in this unsavoury state of affairs was last week’s irresponsible verbal exchange between the two houses, ending with the Senate voting to seek the intervention of the Supreme Court.
How clueless can the Senate and its Speaker be? Hasn’t this same Senate variously disregarded court orders and ridiculed the courts as activist courts out to grab power? Isn’t the Senate aware that its own Speaker was found by a three-judge bench to be guilty of disobeying court orders?
Why does the Senate appreciate the courts only when squeezed by the National Assembly? Here is my petition and plea on why the Supreme Court should leave the Senate at the mercy of the National Assembly.
The Supreme Court is not legally obliged to render an advisory opinion every time a party petitions it. Historically, the less the Supreme Court renders an advisory opinion, the more its stature grows. An advisory opinion should be a rare tool in the court’s arsenal, deployed only in the most of deserving cases.
Second, the Supreme Court has already rendered a powerful advisory opinion on the matter. It has set the law and previously rescued the Senate from near death. If the National Assembly habitually breaks the law and disregards the previous advisory opinion of the Supreme Court, then Kenyans should appreciate the gravity of the challenge facing the country.
More advisory opinions from the Supreme Court can’t remedy personal flaws and leadership inadequacies or failures in the two houses. Other constitutional venues and options must be explored.
Third, the Supreme Court, like all courts, must interrogate the character, demeanour and general manners of the party that seeks its help. Here the court will see that the Senate has been at the forefront of fighting governors and devolution. The Senate has passed endless resolutions disobeying court orders. The Senate has been obstructive in the implementation of the constitution.
COURTS CANNOT SOLVE
Considering its past misbehaviour, the Supreme Court should not render an advisory opinion to a party which respects the law only when it is at a disadvantage.
Four, the Supreme Court should appreciate that the courts cannot solve the problem between the Senate and the National Assembly.
This is a political problem brought about by poor choice on the part of the President and the Deputy President. The solution thereto lies with the two.
The legislature is facing an institutional paralysis that is solely attributable to the Jubilee administration.
It can only be solved by a simultaneous dethronement of the entire leadership of both houses.
Senior Counsel Ahmednasir Abdullahi is the publisher, Nairobi Law Monthly: [email protected]
