This archive report was first published on 26 October 2019.
President Uhuru Kenyatta's rejection of 41 judges has led to a protracted court battle, with the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) spending approximately Sh25 million on the hiring process.
According to sources, the JSC spent 31 active days sorting, shortlisting, and interviewing 502 applicants for various courts, with the Attorney General and two commissioners appointed by the President attending the sittings.
Each commissioner reportedly takes home Sh40,000 for every sitting, with the whole process taking close to 50 days and costing each commissioner around Sh2 million.
Former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga confirmed the existence of a 2015 deal between the President and JSC, where the President agreed not to stall the process at the end of it, after use of public resources.
However, President Kenyatta has since reneged on this deal, leading to the current court battle.
As reported by Saturday Standard, the deal was reached in 2015 at a meeting held at State House ahead of a swearing-in ceremony of a few judges.
“It is members of the public who are going to suffer at the end of the day,” Tom Ojienda told Saturday Standard.
On January 11, 2014, the JSC submitted 25 judges to the President for appointment, but he only appointed 11 of them five months later, indicating that he was still processing the rest.
A five-judge bench delivered a blow to the President on his earlier delay in appointing the judges, saying that his interests were taken care of in the nomination process by the Attorney General and his two other appointees.
They warned that the President's actions would open a window to manipulation and horse-trading in the process of appointment of judges, as well as partisanship, nepotism, negative ethnicity, and tribalism.
“We declare that upon the submission of names of persons to be appointed as judges to the President by JSC, the President is not mandated and/or required to conduct any process of approval or disapproval and any such purported process is unconstitutional and is therefore null and void ab initio,” they said.
