WHY KARUA CONTRADICTION WORKS

THE STANDARD
NAIROBI, KENYA
April 8, 2009
By DOMINIC ODIPO

If a week can be a very long time in politics, a year can be a century!

Take Justice Minister Martha Karua’s career path, for example. In the wake of the 2007 General Election, Ms Karua, who is also the MP for Gichugu, was, in the eyes of millions of voters, the true personification of the forces of reaction, intransigence and protection of the status quo.

She camped at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre seemingly to ensure than no one misled the Electoral Commission of Kenya into declaring anyone else but Mr Mwai Kibaki the duly elected President of the Republic.

Through two days of high-octane drama, Karua was there, batting for President Kibaki with no holds barred.

She turned the room in which disputed presidential election results were being announced into a makeshift courtroom, arguing and defending her position with a sure lawyer’s touch and baffling and irritating her opponents in ODM at every turn.

When Kibaki was swiftly and nocturnally sworn in as president at a ceremony surreptitiously organised by Chief Justice Evan Gicheru, Karua must have felt that her long labours had finally been rewarded and retired for a long night’s well-earned rest. Her man was in State House once again and if the ODM side felt aggrieved or cheated, it could go to court and, as it were, put its case before Justice Gicheru or any other judge he would appoint.

Today, hardly 16 months later, Karua appears to have lost faith in the manner in which the country’s judges are appointed and, in effect, the manner in which Justice Gicheru himself was appointed since he was raised to that post in the same manner by the same President.

Radical change

She thinks that judges are being appointed out of certain people’s pockets without vetting and any due consideration for their competence, moral standing or experience. She believes that, under the current system, if a real good judge comes out at the end of the process, it will be more by accident than by design.

Karua is fed up with what she believes to be rampant corruption and incompetence in the Judiciary and wants to do something to change the status quo. She is fed up with what she sees as more corruption, laxity and incompetence in the rest of the Public Service, including the police force and the State Law Office, and wants radical change effected across the board.

But, as one would expect, the new champions of reaction, intransigence and the status quo, are digging their trenches ready for all out war against her.

Justice Gicheru and the President for whom she fought so valiantly in December 2007 are now appointing judges ‘behind her back’ and Gicheru is publicly reminding her that since she is not a member of the Judicial Service Commission, nobody needs to consult her over the appointment of any judge.

Since Gicheru cannot appoint judges without the President’s concurrence, it is clear, at least from Karua’s point of view, that if the new judges have been pulled out of somebody’s pockets, they are presumably those of Gicheru or Kibaki himself.

Irony keeps piling onto more irony. If Karua had appreciated the true nature of our justice system in 2007, she would not have supported the view that ODM take its grievances to the courts and seek justice there. She would have known that ODM could not hope for justice in a system in which dozens of judges were appointed from people’s pockets, regardless of their competence or moral uprightness. She would have backed the ODM position not to take its case before Justice Gicheru or any of his judges. Which, in turn, means that she would have opposed the PNU-Kibaki position.

Having said that, something very strange is happening to Karua which all politicians need to take note of. The lady from Gichugu is growing bigger in the ordinary citizen’s mind by the day. Paradoxically, the contradictions between her public political positions of December 2007 and today are not diminishing her political profile. On the contrary, they are raising it. The contradictions are also continuously diminishing the profiles and images of all of her protagonists.

Karua is the only minister who now looms larger nationally than at the beginning of the coalition. Almost everyone who has taken her on directly has been diminished as a result of the encounter. In the eyes of the public, Justice Gicheru is the back room schemer trying to knife Karua in the back while she is the people’s voice, the voice of reason.

That is why MPs conspiring to censure her need to tread carefully. Karua will almost certainly survive their Motion as she has already survived the onslaught of so many, including the Prime Minister. Even Kibaki needs to know that Karua will survive him, whether he fires her or not. Let him ask former President Moi!