When Githu threatened to have Raila, Kalonzo executed
What you need to know:
That press conference came almost six years after Mr Odinga opposed the appointment of Prof Muigai by President Mwai Kibaki.
Mr Odinga later supported Prof Muigai who took office on August 23, 2011.
On December 7, 2017, Attorney-General Githu Muigai, who resigned Tuesday, called a press conference at his State Law Office next to Harambee House.
He walked into the mid-morning briefing accompanied by Government Spokesman Eric Kiraithe.
The main news item that week was the planned protest swearing-in of opposition leaders Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka as the “people’s president and deputy” respectively.
“A swearing-in of any person ... any person who has not been lawfully declared to have won an election by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, and a swearing-in that is not conducted by the Chief Justice ... is a process unanticipated by the Constitution, and is null and void, and illegal ab initio,” Prof Muigai said.
HIGH TREASON
The AG added that it was high treason for the person taking such an oath and those facilitating it.
“What is the punishment for high treason?” the bespectacled law professor asked.
“It is death,” he said with a matter of finality and after taking one of his characteristic pauses.
That press conference — later dismissed by Mr Odinga as nonsense — came almost six years after Mr Odinga opposed the appointment of Prof Muigai by President Mwai Kibaki.
Mr Odinga later supported Prof Muigai who took office on August 23, 2011.
ANGLO LEASING
Having won a case in which the anti-corruption commission sought to have Switzerland help recover some Anglo Leasing funds, Prof Muigai was in 2014 placed at the centre of the suit, again.
He absolved himself from blame.
“The man you see ... is a mortician. The patient died on the operating table long ago. If you think the patient should have lived, ask the surgeons,” Prof Muigai said of his predecessor Amos Wako who did not take it kindly.
Mr Wako, now Busia Senator, replied: “If I were the surgeon ... then I handed over the office ... to a fellow surgeon to continue with the treatment of the patient. He ... swore to diligently serve the people of Kenya as the chief government legal adviser.”
Prof Muigai Tuesday hang his boots after six-and-a-half years at Sheria House characterised by an on-and-off relationship with President Uhuru Kenyatta and remarkable deliveries in court punctuated by well-thought-out adjectives.
