He delivered a new Constitution after years of dashed hopes

The copy of the Constitution on my office desk was donated to me by Senior Counsel Mutula Kilonzo.

I put emphasis on Senior Counsel, for that is how the political maverick from Makueni and lawyer loved to be addressed.

In a past conversation with him in is his office over evening tea and a long lecture on sections of the Constitution, the then Justice minister laughed aloud when I suggested he could be fired  because of his position on the ongoing case at the International Criminal Court.

“President (Kibaki) can go ahead and sack me if he deems fit. What have I not achieved?” he asked.

“I have delivered the new Constitution, and I am a decorated Senior Counsel, the highest honour for lawyers in Kenya. That is enough for me,” he said with a smile — almost casually. 

He then launched into yet another long lecture on why he was disappointed with Kenyan journalists. 

“You people have a lot of power, but it makes me very sad that you are not defending this Constitution. Go, read and defend this Constitution from desecration.” He signed and gave me a copy.

The outspoken lawyer was a friend of the media, always ready to take calls from journalists on issues many a politician would not touch. He was a walking encyclopaedia on the Constitution.  

Rabble-rousing, intelligent, straight-talking, easy-going and good humoured. 

His journey in politics is a paradox. From an unrepentant defender of the oppressive anti-reform Kanu regime, in three years Mr Kilonzo transformed himself into a champion of reforms and greater freedoms now captured in the 2010 Constitution whose Bill of Rights he touted as the most progressive in the world.

“I am happy that people like Mutula have now seen the light,” Siaya Senator James Orengo last year joked in Parliament after what he considered a progressive contribution by Mr Kilonzo.

 The second-born son of  Wilson Kilonzo Musembi and Rhoda Koki Kilonzo, the 65-year-old lawyer who made huge fortunes during the Nyayo era was extremely reluctant to join politics.

Kanu first asked him to contest a political seat in 1992, but he declined.

“I never considered myself as a politician. I could not see how I would fit politics into my schedule,” he said in a past interview.

The party wanted to nominate him to Parliament, but he also turned down that offer.

The gesture was extended again in  the 1997 elections, but he declined for the third time after the Kiss 100 radio talk show Crossfire where he continued to vigorously defend the then ruling party.

After the 2002 general elections, Kanu nominated him as an MP — this time round without seeking his consent.

“Uhuru must have been told by Kanu officials not to ask me,” he said.

The man who would go without a salary throughout the five years in Parliament after the Kenya Revenue Authority attached his pay to cover tax arrears, would go ahead to win the Mbooni parliamentary seat on an ODM-Kenya ticket in the 2007 elections.

And thanks to the power-sharing agreement between former President Kibaki and his then deputy Kalonzo Musyoka, the Mbooni lawyer was appointed Nairobi Metropolitan minister and later Justice minister after the resignation of Ms Martha Karua from Cabinet.

It was during this period that the ministry championed the enactment of the 2010 Constitution.

It was while at the Justice ministry that Mr Kilonzo became a thorn in the flesh of the Kibaki administration, especially on the ICC case facing President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto.

Mr Kilonzo was the only Cabinet minister on President Kibaki’s side of the coalition who openly supported taking Kenyan cases to the ICC and even called for the removal of Mr Kenyatta from government after the ICC judges committed the two to trial. And in what angered a large section of PNU, Mr Kilonzo maintained that Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto were not qualified to contest the presidency.