 Thank you so much for staying with us. This is why in the morning the station is OI 254. I trust you're doing well this morning. Time for politics. We say youth and politics are now we're looking into the judicial leadership of CJ Maraga and the question is are you satisfied with his leadership for the last three years or so he has been into the helm of things. What will you remember him with other than nullifying the 2017 January elections because that is what most of the people know him for but of course as a leader as the head of the Supreme Court or being the president of the Supreme Court so much has been done in the judiciary and that is what we are looking into this very morning. I'm speaking to political analyst Cyrus Litzwa and Jack Mumali a political and activist send us your comments or questions to all our social media platforms at Y254 channel on facebook and instagram at Y254 channel on twitter very good Monday morning to you my name is Adreva Hillary welcome to the program good morning and welcome gentlemen now so much has been happening around us and before even we talk about the judiciary and the leadership of CJ Maraga today the president will be having the conference that has been spoken so much of and the Kenyans are hoping that the economy will be reopened and by the most of the people have been like what is the economy maybe the businesses or something but even so I want to begin with you Cyrus what do you expect from the president from that particular conference they will be having in as much as we have been waiting for this the bars are closed curfew is still in force what do you expect thank you for having me this morning as I have always said and stated I think we should have borrowed a lift from our counterparts and Tanzania brothers we could have just said this thing is there with us we need to stay grass grass move on with our life because for sure what is happening today okay you know they say actions speak louder than words what is happening today from our own leaders it is contrary to what they advise us to do when you see them holding rallies even the president himself he has been he has been in rallies very several times the starting from the one that we had in Mkuru then he has had other several meetings we go on a inch there's no social distancing there's no mask wearing you've seen the former prime minister the same you've seen the deputy president in fact he has been very consistent in his meetings without those considerations of social distancing so I ask myself what is the difference between us and Tanzania who said this thing is there and you're going to stay with it let's be the way we are going to manage it the way it is so we've lived a lie for a very long time and it's high time we need to be realistic because money has been borrowed during this time of covid which we don't know what it has done the school we are talking about schools opening what measures are we put in place to ensure that we manage this pandemic as it is okay so these are some of the questions that we need to keep on asking yourself they tell us to have social distance in churches but for them when they go to the same same churches there's no social distance so what examples are they portraying as leaders because you should always lead by example I can say is that the cut is out of the bag and even if he calls a political meeting what is he going to address in that political meeting and yet the same same political leaders are not doing what they are advising us to do all right so it's just but psychofancy that you are going to see from it because at the end of the day you should lead by example all right thank you now mark what do you expect from the president Jack sorry what do you expect from the president I wouldn't expect anything short of the president calling of these closing off of the country I expect the president to come out and be realistic to think about how these closing of the country has affected the livelihood of the people of this nation mm-hmm businesses have closed down people are not going to church Kenya being a Christian or rather a religious nation people are not going to church the kafu being in force has affected the traveling of people most people like people who do business across the country have always known and traveling during the night especially the small traders for example people coming from Mombasa coming to Nairobi to do shopping for their sales back in Mombasa they have always traveled during the night and then do their businesses during the day Nairobi and traveling back to Mombasa these have taken a big toll on the on the economy around the country so I wouldn't be expecting anything short of the president president calling of these kafu and closing up of the economy because it seemed like my co-panelist says we've seen politicians running around the country holding huge rallies not observing social distancing no masks we've not seen people washing their house in the gathering we've even seen politicians holding meetings among themselves with total disregard of the advice given by the minister of health so I don't see why Kenyans should continue being subjected to these kind of a close up of the of the country so the president will open up the country and let people go about their lives as normal so in insha just like the the C.S. ministry of health Moteika were used to say the responsibility lies within the citizens now let's talk about the leadership judicial leadership of the CJ Maraga now that his time is almost coming to an end and of course actually there was a there was a some rumors that he is retiring come January but it so happened the letter was was fake it was it was back dated to some it was traced to some some some uh judge in Malawi so it was not someone had to cook the details and talk of our CJ as being that person so it is it was not his and the judiciary has claimed he's not going so uh for now but we wait and see what will happen but of course this time a constitutional is coming to an end he'll be retiring at the age of 70 I don't know when that will be but of course this time is coming to an end very soon he might not be there during the next general election but I want us to look at him comparing to his predecessor uh justice Maraga Nani Mutunga uh in terms of leadership in the judiciary and first of things that Mutunga did he laid permanent uh undistectable foundation for the transformed judiciary and that the blueprint of the Kenyan judiciary transformation framework of 2012 to 2016 and one of the things that he did he he achieved impressive progress in bringing the justice system closer to ordinary people I still want to begin right from there you finished do you think uh CJ Maraga has lived by his predecessors uh footprint comparatively I think um justice Maraga has done better because uh he has uh believed in the you know the constitution has bestowed upon him to to do he has always followed what is in the constitution and what the law says but I will say Maraga has been failed by the political class I remember uh when he first made the controversial notification of the presidential elections and that is where he became he came into coalition with the with the arm of the government that is the executive and it was upon the political class especially the opposition to work with the with the judiciary because it came an affront to the judiciary from the from the executive and also the the arm of the government the legislature and Maraga found himself alone without windshield from from the other political class that is the opposition all along I can say he's uh he's done it the the way it was expected of him yes all right saras do you think uh CJ Maraga veered off the footprints of his predecessors who came and did better things uh what I can say is that uh justice Maraga the undoing of him was when he decided to relate himself uh and forget the institution that is leading is an independent institution and an an institution that is mandated in ensuring that the laws of the countries are followed to the latter an institution that is uh uh uh uh that the country depends much on the protection of the law that the legislature makes uh where am I saying that he forgot his responsibilities because one he decided to dine and whine the executive to one point okay and also he decided also to dance the tune of the of the of the opposition to untimed and you see this one taints your image as as as as an institution because it's some extent it portrays you as a person who you don't only need to make your own sound judgment but it shows that you have some external forces that are around you that pushes you to come up with some decisions now apart from just the nullification of the presidential election I've not seen anything good he has done because for me I've always said we need to expedite the corruption cases that are around our leaders because that is part and parcel of good governance in the country to achieve it we need to have judiciary up on its toes running and executing its mandate led by the chief justice we need to have the anti corruption courts up and running uh ensuring that this corruption cases that are tagged on our leaders there should be good relationship between the prosecution that is the DPP's office the ESCC and the office of the judiciary so that we can have expeditious and speedy uh ruling on corruption cases that has always been on our leaders because every now every every minute you work up is a corruption case on a county government a corruption case on a member of parliament a corruption case on the many many ministries that are there in the country and this drains our our our development efforts and uh and uh uh you see for us to develop we need to have uh what you call economic driven process in our country whereby we have to ensure and uh that's uh whatever we have from our own revenue collection is well managed okay and well distributed when it is distributed let us also follow how it is distributed when we hear of a corruption case let us follow that corruption case to the latter all right because this corruption hinders our development in this country all right uh i i wanted i will be mentioning about the corruption but of of course you're looking into some of the things uh CJ former CJ Mutunga did and what Maraga did and for Mutunga he not only uh succeeded in humanizing Kenyan judicial systems he also reduced the number of case backlogs jack significantly and so far an example is the recent case of the uh Honrabu is it a laka waluke case that took two years now to be to be ruled out i'm sure there are there could be some number of cases there could be a few cases have remained do you think CJ Maraga when he came in he has continued with the trend of reducing the number of cases in courts CJ Maraga i will still say he has done his best but uh as i said before he's undoing his uh his bad relationship with the executive you remember it is in the public domain that he has been frustrated uh you remember the frustration coming in by the slashing of the judicial budget uh this hinders the operation of the of the courts because without fanting then some of the operations the courts are slowed down i believe that the judiciary under chief justice maraga has done what Kenyans expected them to do even if not a hundred percent at the level that we expected but i think they have done kulementas a job all right now sairas during his tenure uh mutunga succeeded in reducing case backlogs do you think during a CJ Maraga's cases have been reduced significantly as compared to to me i can say the cases are not have not reduced significantly why there are cases that have gone to court and have been thrown out because of either the issue the DPP or EACC those fangos and the judiciary themselves the three institutions the EACC the DPP and the judiciary have not worked because when you talk of working for one inchi it's all about delivering to one inchi what he expects to be delivered to him okay it's not all about uh uh uh serving the higher gods the small g no it's all about ensuring there is delivery of service to that one inchi and that's why you mentioned about uh mutunga taking the courts to to to to one inchi that's the public okay let us uh let us embrace that is what we need to embrace and that is what he could have actually worked to assure it is there okay and i remember even at a point mutunga uh said this not each and every battle will be taken to court some battles you can handle them uh uh uh with your local local leaders or local uh courts so this one it it is one way of reducing the backlogs of cases because there are other cases that are very civil you don't need to always stay in court because it will stay there forever and ever now we have learned issues that need to be also expedited expedited and the land issue our thorny issue in the country there are many times that the title deeds that have been issued by the executive to the one inchi have been revoked okay now we need the the the judiciary and uh the the the dpp and the ecc need to sit down and interrogate itself plus the 190 why is it that the issue the titles that have been issued are being revoked okay are being termed as fake because these are government that has issued the title deed the same government that issued someone else a title deed that is time to be valid then why is it that's when it is done publicly okay it raises it raises some some some questions the the title deeds that were issued to people in korogoshi have raised questions it already that were issued in in in uh in uh kustu region sometimes back they raised issues so these are some of the things that the judiciary should sit down the ecc and the dpp so that they can interrogate this with the ministry of land okay so that we get to stop this happening every now and then because when another another government another executive will come in or another president will come in and the issues of i'm very sure there'll be a revocation of other title deeds you've seen what has happened in langata uh they they they are saying that the land is uh encroaching the the the gong forest but what happened the somebody went to court it was stopped when when when we talked of uh the the people of rwai near the sewa the sewa people slept outside so justice is not treating each and every person equally so you cannot see uh and see as a president of the of the of the of the judiciary these are some of the things that you need to look into why is it that some other people are treated uh with the high dignity than others does it mean that uh this is what you call shambalawa lawanyama so these are some of the things that we need to look into when you are talking about delivery of service from our own institutions yeah all right i i i i want to throw that question to jack do you think the current judicial system has been serving monainchi partially in terms of justice serving monainchi from the with partiality in terms of justice there are people who who are the who is who in the society yes previously and even currently because we've seen people with a very serious a very serious cases taken to court and then they they are left off the hook maybe because uh so and so placed a button in the in the judiciary also in so called whoever is handling the case or um they bought their way out of the of the cases but when a normal monainchi or normal citizen has a very minor case taken to court they will always get a conviction because their voices are not heard even if we went to the prisons today there are so many people who are in prison either awaiting completion of their cases because they don't know anyone in the in the big the bigger system of this country they are not close to power or there are people who have been convicted uh without committing committing the the crime that they were convicted of just because they couldn't buy their way or they couldn't buy justice so justice in this country I think it's for the for the few the few minority who have muscles and those people who don't have muscles the common monainchi don't access justice it is been a challenge to the common monainchi so I wouldn't say that the previous judiciary or even the current judiciary has treated the Kenyan populace equally and in in your own opinion what do you think is the challenge to this the challenge to this is corruption all right for that idea will be coming there now I want to come back to you sir Sairas now among other things that CJ Dr Mutunga did he aimed to use technologies and enable justice as well as to bring about iktobu and transparent system of recruitment and promotions and training in the judicial system and of course the other day we saw uh CJ Maraga launch the online digital part of something and even kovid-19 has enabled us to use technology now compared to what Dr Mutunga dreamed of and what he began are we at par with this dream with CJ Maraga when we look at the digitalization of the judicial system I can say that one is has been achieved it's a plus something good that we should embrace and you know as much as we get a lot even my personally you throw so much stones on Maraga Mutunga was an activist who really wanted to see a change in the country be it political reforms be it constitutional reforms be it whatever kind of reforms that this country would engage itself in so he was a reformist and he did that as a reformist to confirm that as a reformist this is what i can do so this one explains to us two different things you can't be in the system okay but you fail to understand the needs of the system so this will trigger failure in your achievements but someone who understand the system best is someone who is outside who is championing for the best of that system given the mandate he'll do the best he can do so it is also a challenge to us as citizens and as Kenyans and as tax players for us to get good services let us know who are these people we are entrusting with the mandate in the top positions all right we should not just give it to each and everyone let us uh let us uh audit our our our our our our our our leaders in each and every institution let us not only focus on delivery service of an mp delivery service of a president let us look let us put a focus on each and every institution in this country and by doing that we shall achieve the best yes all right now jack we have been waiting for the approver of 41 judges and it has been a bone of contention in the judiciary and the executive but now in terms of recruitment and the use of technology to bring transparency in the judiciary do you think a cj maraga has seen this through or we still missing some points has it has it done not has improved on it on the appointment or recruitment the appointment and the promotions of the considering we are still awaiting him to put pressure on the president again to approve the 41 judges that we need i think the mandate to put pressure on the president to do what is right does not lie with maraga but rather lies with the people of kenya the political class and the concerns of the president because uh i think it is his obligation to do what is right and if the 41 judges were uh who are recruited by the judicial service commission and the names forwarded to him by the chief justice to do what is needy for i really don't understand why the president should remain mum on the same for that this long period knowing very well that we have got a lot of cases that are supposed to be dealt with by the same the same judges maraga has done what was expected of him by advising the president to do the appointment sorry to do the appointment of the 41 judges so it is uh it is up to us kenyans to come out and demand what is expected of the executive in this matter but if we left the same to justice maraga i don't think we are going to achieve much or rather realize much out of it yes so we should speak and especially speaking it doesn't it doesn't mean that we have to look for the president and speak to him in person we can speak through our representatives in paliament we can speak through our representatives maybe the civil society who champion the human rights and maybe the governance good governance stuff like that now that you have mentioned the ceaseless as a as a political activist do you think the the ceaseless have been so silent there the ceaseless in terms of making the necessary noise in ensuring the president or any concerned party uh hits to the directives or the uh advice given by the CJ yes they have been silent for some time and uh why they have been silent i think for a very long time in this country we've uh we've already we've always hint our our plight our plight force on one on one person and this is the the opposition leader who is now now in the government honourable rila odinga to champion whatever the Kenyan populace expects so the civil rights or rather the ceaseless have always have always worked hand in hand with the right honourable rila odinga and whenever he calls an action people have always come out in big numbers to to push for whatever whatever calls that is in place but ever since he took a back seat and joined government i think main things have not have remained at some some point look so i know you have something you want to add on that but i just want to remind our view we are looking into the leadership the judicial leadership of justice us uh the CJ chief justice david maraga vis-a-vis his predecessor dr mutunga what he did and what uh here maraga has come into office what he has done for the last three or two years send us your comments to all our social media platforms at y254 channel on facebook and instagram at y254 channel on twitter now you want to weigh in to what you see yes it is the undoing of our country it is undoing of civil society and him being an activist he has confirmed that the civil society are not doing their things independently they rely on someone you see that is the undoing and we can say now because he says he has mentioned it clearly elaboratively that they have been working with the prime minister on all this and i want to ask a question if the prime minister becomes a president the former prime minister becomes a president today does it mean that no one will question him these are some of the questions that you need to ask ourselves that no one will question him even if he does the wrong thing no one they will be no civil society to question him because the civil societies are working with him he's working with the government there are so many wrongs that are happening today but no one is talking about them just because the former premier is on this other side so this is a very wrong notion and i think i want to weigh weigh in on that i think it should not be made to look like i'm saying that Rila is unquestionable what information i'm trying to put across is that we need to open up freedom space in this country because today like if you went to political outfits like the orange democratic party or you went to the followers of the right honorable Rilo Dinka people who follow him especially politicians beat members of parliament a bit governors or another person in leadership if they came in coalition with what he believes in then you'll find a number of negativity being thrown their way maybe they have this case there they have that case they are they are not being re-elected because they differed with the the right honorable Rilo Dinka so in that case you see unless someone comes out and believes in himself then you are going to achieve what we want to achieve as a country but as long as we want to as long as we want to believe that unless i hang on someone's coat tail then i can't be myself we are going to lose it i want you to make me understand when you mentioned that most of the civil society organizations work to be the honorable Rila uh is what they working with honorable Rila because he was in opposition as a person or they worked with the office of the opposition because maybe tomorrow someone else will be in the opposition where they see those work with the person in the office or they will be wanting to have Rila yes they worked with the opposition but you see in this country traditionally we've been made to or rather Kenyans have been made to believe that unless unless someone also and so say that this is the way to go they they don't go before he cut me short when i was explaining something on the civil society uh and i still repeat he has confirmed that civil society is not independent there are so many things and i stated there are so many things that are happening in this country remember the same same maraga in 2014 he was shown in as a high court judge okay 2014 i am not wrong and i stand to be corrected on the on the year he was shown in as a high court judge okay so whatever is befalling uh the judicial remember we have we have commissions that are well stipulated in our constitution okay the judicial service commission is part of the commissions that are there teacher service commission is the commission that are there right now we are we are calling on health health health workers to have their own commission so that they are able to to to manage the health workers in this country you see the way teachers are managing this country very well man they have no problems at all now what the and their problems are solved within their commission okay so the judicial service commission has failed in one or the other in ensuring this justice delivery to the country okay and to the people and the civil society that is where you need to look as a civil society person or activist you need to look at what is ailing a country okay you yourself you came up and going to register your your society to champion for the rights of the kenyan people based on the constitution that are well stipulated that is the kenyan rights okay the media right the freedom of position the freedom if an infringement in that right happens you need to step up you don't need to wait for somebody to come and direct you don't need to wait for somebody to come and and show you then it shows that they are not they are not purpose driven they are individually driven all right that that would be the final statement on the cso's the the judicial service commission has not failed what is failing us is the fully implementation of the 2010 constitution and who is to blame for that who is to blame the civil society not the civil society the civil society doesn't implement the constitution we have we have key players the judicial has the river the river the river you see why why why have I mentioned the civil society you see when we have a a problem in the constitution and I I mentioned that when I just talked that the civil society come up to champion for the rights of the citizens the rights that are best and well defined in the constitution right I've always on this platform I've always stated that the implementation the implementers of the constitution failed when the chair of the CIC term ended that term ended the parliament could have extended his term to ensure that even let me say 80 percent of implementation of the constitution but that one didn't happen that is a time the civil society could have risen up okay because this is the thing that is ailing us I want to mention it and you can you can you can you can look at the civil society is you and me I don't object see you the civil society is you and me you see I'm tearing in what is stated and you can bear me witness he stated very clearly they were working under the control of an individual and you see it's a very risky thing no you you got it wrong I didn't get it wrong it was that we were working under his control he later backtracked his statement and he said they worked with the opposition with the opposition never worked under someone else and right now we could say kinder we could say it's not the truth or it's not the the real deal the the opposition that we have right now is in the government and the only person in the who could be in the opposition is Hon. Musali Mudavadi of which now we even do not know what happens and next but let us move on one of the things CJ Dr. Mutunga did was he was supporting he strengthened the judicial training institutes as a nucleus for jurisdiction training as well as institution of higher learning these we'll be looking into when we come out of this break I see I think the the the temperature here is changing I don't know how this is going to happen but stay with us we'll be taking a very short break when we come back we still look into the leadership leadership of CJ Maraga as compared to Dr. Mutunga his predecessor stay with us