KENYAN COURTS AND PARLIAMENT ARE BETRAYERS OF HUMANE GOVERNANCE Alexander K Opicho (Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo) I have chosen not to use the word democracy but instead I have used words; ‘ humane governance’ not out of not knowing but under the full knowledge that political conditions in Kenya indeed pose a challenge to application of the word democracy in description of administrative institutions . Democracy is rendered hypothetical where democratic election machinery produces non-democratic results .Like in Kenya a large tribe forms a government against small tribes, a large religious organization forms government against small religious groups or the moneyed class muzzles all the democratically genuine efforts of the poor only to form government against the very poor. So in Kenya, at most governments are formed out of tribal consciousness and cultural-religious consciousness of the most populous against the similar consciousness of the minority. Now, using the word democracy in such situation is indisputably too early. However, through trial and error the words; humane governance can at least befit the situation. Coming back to the point; institutions of parliament nowadays known as the lower house of Kenya and the courts otherwise known as the judiciary have of late evolved into forces that again provide materials that pin down the very contemplated human governance. The a,b,c,and d of recent events and current political unfolding are testimonies to these vices, the vices that are now eating the Kenyan society to a mild despair like a goat-ling in the loops of the boa constrictor. It is memorable that the teachers who were participating in a lawful unionized strike were denied their monthly salaries. In addition the court fined all the teachers a penalty of Kenya shillings ten thousand each or they serve a sentence of six months in prison. This decision was publicly glorified by the attorney general of the state, Professor Githu Muigai.More extorting experience is evidently bearable, when the attorney general further contested on behalf of the state against the striking teachers that it amounts to court contempt if teachers will not abandon the strike and dance to the punitive tune of the court. This position was taken by attorney general in full contradiction of the law; both the constitutional law which gives all Kenyans the right of participating in the lawful strikes and demonstrations as well as the Statutes of general application that made the basis of decision in the matter of Ford motors versus associations of workers of Ford motors union in 1943 in London. The attorney general was biased when he failed to recognize a democratic virtue that if the court in its duty fails to uphold the constitution then any person or organization has full constitutional rights to remain defiant to that court order that was executed in conflict with the constitution. The joint efforts of the attorney general and the Kenya teachers service commission to perpetrate this type of extortive terror on powerless teachers will not fail to make any person who saw the media clips of the teachers during the last week not to fail in adopting Karl Marx’s words that they are a crowd of scrofulous, overworked, tired and consumptive starvelings, as the most optimal description of Kenyan teaching fraternity. Readers of German ideology, one of the classical works of Karl Marx are aware of the condition that a person who does not have food, house, drink and clothes to an adequate measure he or she cannot defend democratic rights that pertain to herself.Thus,using logic of action and purpose in above episode of Kenya’s labour versus political razzmatazz, one would not fail to deciphere that the attorney general wants to play a sadistic role of subjecting teachers to terror of illusive want so that they cannot stand a capacity to enforce their constitutional right of freedom to unionize their labour and entitlement to a good pay. In a current economic continuum of interplay between sectors and institution, teachers and education sectors add more value to Kenyan macro-economic bowel than the parliament. In fact the parliament is merely a cost driver, it is expensive to the taxpaying society in return for nothing worthwile.The parliament of Kenya was required to make quality legislations that could give ground work for devolution of governance but instead the parliament in its lower house is the major stumbling block to devolution of governance and implementation as well as dispensation of the constitution. Observation of recent events has it that the parliament is more engaged in selfish legislation, it inspires sense of tribe and is nonchalant to democratic and economic imperatives of a run- of- the- mill Kenyan.However, in a sharp counterpoise, teachers and education sector are the true soilers, it’s the sweat of their brow that will catapult Kenya towards the desired goal of millennium development. Indeed economic torment of teachers is a high level of inhumanity in governance at all possible levels. A clear example in which the Kenyan courts stand out as antitheses to democracy is in the recent eventuality of the Kenyan Supreme Court foiling the procedural fabric of the case which disputed presidential elections of 2012, where the chief justice made a decision against the plaintiffs without giving reasons neither of facts nor law. Such and many other administrative flaps will not fail to give to a Kenyan les enfant terrible who will solve next disputed elections in the streets but not in the court room. The same brave courts went ahead to criminalize a drama work of Bunyore Girls secondary school simply because the shackles of doom, the drama which these girls were to perform. Simply because the play gives would give a clear picture of how avarice of capitalism plus deep sense of primitive accumulation of wealth will make the oil resources recently discovered in Kenya to put the society in to troubles instead of peace. How I wish the courts and the political class in Kenya had some literary benchmarking on the Catholic Church, which keeps all the books that pique the church in the church library. All anti catholic literature books like; The Bank of God, In God’s name, Christ the man, the word, the apparition, Da vince code, and O Jerusalem are found in catholic libraries all over the world. Technically it means that censure of literature is only done by public taste, literary critique or literary experts but not by the court which even cannot differentiate synechedoche from serenedipity. This was mere failure to respect nationwide democracy. References; Karl Marx; German ideology Alexander K Opicho is a social researcher with Sanctuary Researchers ltd in Eldoret, Kenya he is also a lecturer in Research Methods in governance and Leadership
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 09:10:15 +0000
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