Sore Jubilee has smelled blood, Chief Justice Maraga beware
Chief Justice David Maraga at Supreme Court on October 25, 2017. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
The same week that the President played his first cards, the CJ did a shuffle of his own.
Justice George Odunga was moved from Judicial Review Division in Nairobi where his gate-keeping role had made him a hate figure for Jubilee.
If you want to hang a dog you first give it a bad name. That is what Chief Justice David Maraga should read in the rude letter from the Jubilee attack dog Raphael Tuju last week, accusing the top judge of all manner of sins.
After the social media smear campaign last year linking the Supreme Court judges who nullified President Uhuru Kenyatta’s election to a crooks network, the Tuju letter marks a new low for the Uhuru administration.
Just how much lower can it sink?
Well, that is most likely to be the point at which the last of the country’s democratic institutions is either dismantled or made to bend to its will.
It is an open secret that the Maraga Judiciary has been on the administration’s radar ever since the Supreme Court made that landmark decision to annul the President’s election on September 1, 2017.
Indeed Mr Kenyatta, freshly sore from losing the election petition, immediately came out to make the battle cry in his infamous “we shall revisit” address to a crowd of supporters in Nairobi the same day.
What hasn’t been quite clear, until now, is the actual battle plan.
SHAKE-UP
The President appeared to show his hand earlier last week with the shake-up of his team of legal advisers that saw Attorney-General Githu Muigai resign, Solicitor-General Njee Muturi move to State House as Deputy Chief of Staff and Abdikadir Mohamed, the constitutional affairs adviser, sent to South Korea as ambassador.
The shake-up lends credence to speculation of concerns within the inner power circle that the Supreme Court judges in the majority decision weren’t swayed to hold a contrary view.
It begins to make even more sense when you consider the fact that a Judiciary insider – a Court of Appeal judge no less – has been picked to replace Prof Muigai at the State Law Office.
A more ominous sign for the Judiciary has to be the recent appointments to the Judicial Service Commission (JSC).
Will the apparent shift in the balance of power at the judges’ employer in favour of the ruling elite embolden Jubilee to go after Justice Maraga personally?
Is Mr Tuju’s rude letter a raw draft of a petition that some faceless Nairobi businessman is about to turn up with at the JSC offices seeking the CJ’s ouster?
ROUTINE TRANSFER
Of course, time will tell if there is such a plan or if it gets to be executed successfully.
What is less doubtful is that the Jubilee piranhas have smelled blood.
The same week that the President played his first cards, the CJ did a shuffle of his own.
Notably, Justice George Odunga was moved from Judicial Review Division in Nairobi where his gate-keeping role had made him a hate figure for Jubilee. It may well have been routine transfer.
But if the power elite interpret it as a sign of the CJ balking under pressure, they will swiftly move for the kill.
[email protected] @otienootieno
