By PHILIP OCHIENG
Posted Friday, May 13 2011 at 14:44
Posted Friday, May 13 2011 at 14:44
Of those who would be our Chief Justice, Samuel Bosire, Lee Muthoga, Kalpana Rawal and Alladin Visram have made judgments against me which, I thought, were not fair — Mr Bosire following his judicial inquiry into Goldenberg and Mr Muthoga in a situation which was not even juridical.
Sometime in 1992, my publisher Calestous Juma invited him to officially launch my book I Accuse the Press, and Mr Muthoga made disparaging comments which seemed driven, not by the book, but by the antipathy with which that time’s anti-Moi forces regarded me as a result of my erstwhile Kenya Times activities.
Deepest abyss
Though I would repeat my straight jabs at the “democratic” hypocrisy of Kiraitu Murungi, James Orengo and other self-styled “second liberationists” — the individuals whose regime has since plunged Kenya into the deepest abyss — the fact is that I left the Moi service with a deep stigma on my skin, which has taken me all of 20 years to shed.
That is why I sympathised with the candidates — including Joseph Nyamu and Riaga Omolo and even Mr Muthoga and Mr Visram — when the interviewers accused them of having made judicial decisions which — like my own editorial ones during 1988-91 — seemed commanded by the big man at State House.
I later learned that, in those days — especially as the “second liberation” got under way (with support from such Big Brotherly redoubts of political and juridical sinlessness as London and Washington) — to say anything, no matter how cogent, which seemed to favour the helmsman was to commit ethico-intellectual suicide.
Thus, for my argument that multi-partyism would culminate in precisely the tribal Armageddon in which Kenya finds itself today, I was immediately branded a bedfellow with Okiki Amayo, Ezekiel Barng’etuny, Kariuki Chotara, Davidson Kuguru, Mulu Mutisya, James Njiru, Shariff Nassir and other party hacks who advocated the single-party regime merely to perpetuate themselves in power.
In such a situation, if — like myself — you thought you were being unjustly stigmatised, you naturally read bigoted party politics in the statement by opposition lawyers like my friends Paul Muite and Willy Mutunga that many judges — Norbury Dugdale comes to mind — had become Moi marionettes.
Thus when, some time in 1991, a judge called Mbaluto made a historic ruling against the President on an important constitutional matter, I felt that the Bench had become a hotbed of political opportunism. Today — looking back on it from the vantage of hindsight — I must say I was probably wrong about Mr Mbaluto.
But the cinch is that if — like me — you were vocal anywhere in the public service, you were branded and stigmatised — and often rightly so because all of us, including those who in the last two weeks interviewed our candidates for the CJ’s position, contributed, knowingly or unknowingly, to the making of the Nyayo autocracy.
Augustinian Original Sin
Nyayoism, then, proved a debilitating Augustinian Original Sin. Yet if we had conducted a proper truth and reconciliation ablution, we might effectively have cleansed our national soul.
With the two Principals in the vanguard, we might have created a Hoover into which to pour all our past iniquities and disown them so as to dedicate ourselves anew to the nation ready to be “born again”.
But, because we failed to do so, we all remain sinners. It is a sin even more mortal for some of us to arrogate to ourselves the power of judgement, implicitly declaring ourselves the immaculate ones and pronouncing everybody else guilty unheard.
No, I do not declare any judge innocent. I say merely that, for the job at hand, Samuel Bosire, Lee Muthoga, Riaga Omollo, Kalpana Rawal, Alladin Visram and Willy Mutunga were among the most qualified sinners.
So they picked one of them because, clearly, Abraham was wrong to remonstrate with the Lord God. For, in Sodom and Gomorrah, there can be no clean candidate.
ochiengotani@gmail.com
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