The real issues behind judges’ cars saga

By Sunday Standard team

There is much more than meets the eye in the hullabaloo surrounding the issue of buying new cars for judges, investigations by The Standard On Sunday have established.

It is emerging that business rivalry between two leading motor vehicle dealers is the prime agenda driving the uproar. In the last couple of days, the media have been awash with reports critical of a decision by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) to purchase new cars for the increasing number of judges.

Questions have been raised on the wisdom of purchasing Mercedes Benz cars for judges instead of going with VW Passat which have become the standard model for seniorGovernment officials. Questions have been raised over the purchase of a ceremonial car for the Chief Justice to replace the older vehicle used by his predecessors. Incidentally, the Chief Justice is not the only top public official who has a Mercedes Benz S350.

A similar ceremonial car was purchased for the Speaker of the National Assembly in October 2010 at a cost of Sh16.6 million – with registration SNA 1.

The Chief of General Staff is another senior public officer entitled to a similar car — with registration CGS 1. In 2009, theGovernment came up with a policy, which stipulated that the maximum engine capacity for officialGovernment vehicles should not exceed 2000cc.

The engine size policy was followed by another policy that pushed the business of supplyingGovernment with vehicles for senior public officers to CMC Motors — the franchise holders for VW Passat vehicles.

Suddenly, CMC Motors become the largest supplier of Government vehicles taking over from DT Dobie, which had hitherto been a near-exclusive supplier of luxury vehicles to the government. It is significant to note that fortunes for CMC Motors improved significantly — in regard toGovernment business — when the motor group engaged the services of Pewin Motors, an agency firm owned by Peter Kirigua, a former employee of DT Dobie who is well connected politically.

Large-scale business

Kirigua works closely with city businessman Paul Wanderi Ndung’u, a director and large shareholder in CMC Motors. With such good connections, CMC Motors was almost assured of constant and large-scaleGovernment business. Then the Judiciary Service Commission came up with the idea of replenishing its fleet, not with standard-government-issue VW Passat, but Mercedes Benz from the rival company DT Dobie.

And it was not a small order. The Judiciary was spending a cool half a billion to renew its fleet. That is the kind of money any motor dealer will fight over.

And so the fight has begun. Before purchasing the cars, the Judiciary sought approval from the Treasury as the law requires. The Treasury provided its approval in a letter dated December 5, last year, and copied to the Auditor-General. But early last week when the Permanent Secretary for Finance Joseph Kinyua was confronted by the media on the matter, he said:

“I will not comment on the matter until I have talked with the Judiciary to understand it better. We are encouraging all public officials to be prudent in their spending of resources but the issue is not the make of cars...”  So does this mean the PS was not aware about the issue and yet in December last year his office had cleared the allocation of Sh500 million for purchasing cars for judges and other senior officials at the Judiciary?

Nevertheless, the PS in his response to the media, raised an important point; that the issue is not model or make of cars. Sources familiar withGovernment policy and procedures on purchase of motor vehicles say that although the policy on engine size was assumed to mean that the Government could only purchase VW Passat for its senior officers, this is not the case.

Government departments are free to purchase other models of vehicles so long as the vehicles in question do not exceed the 2000cc engine capacity. The Mercedes Benz, which the Judiciary purchased from DT Dobie, have an engine capacity of 1,799cc. This makes them compliant with the requisiteGovernment policy.