CJ Maraga Risks Impeachment after Clashing With MPs over Consent Age

Chief Justice David Maraga has received impeachment threats after clashing with Members of Parliament on their role e in shooting down a proposal seeking to lower consensual age for sex from 18 to 16 years.

Maraga who expressed dissatisfaction with the manner in which legislators handled the Bill said it left a lot of gaps making it biased and unfair particularly to the boy-child.

Murang’a Senator Irungu Kang’ata is among those threatening to force the CJ out of office.

MP threatens to impeach CJ Maraga for criticising Parliament over consent age

According to the Senator who spoke on Tuesday, May 21, the CJ’s sentiments infringed on the roles of parliament and a disciplinary action ought to be taken against him.

“The Chief Justice cannot purport to legislate while sitting on the bench, he is going beyond his duties as the CJ and we ought to remind him,” said Kang’ata.

He vowed to use all the avenues to ensure Maraga was removed from office for failing to respect other independent institutions and publicly rebuking their work. According to the legislator, the Judiciary was only mandated to interpret the law and not to tell parliament what or how it should carry out its legislative roles.

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“I will use different avenues to ensure he resigns because his suggestions on sexual offences will corrupt family values and cause more harm than good to the society,”

Kang’ata said it was regrettable that the CJ was advocating a reduction of consensual age for sex from 18 years to 16 years at the time teenage pregnancies and sex offences pitting minors were escalating.

“It is unfortunate that he suggests that we reduce the consensual age while I hold a view that the age should be increased to 22 years going by the increasing cases of sex offences among teenage,” Maraga, while addressing seminar on criminal justice system on gender-based violence on Friday, May 17, lashed out at the MPs for passing a law that was biased and full of gaps.

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He claimed young boys were being locked up in prisons because of such laws which do not reflect on the real issues affecting the society

“The gaps in our laws is one of the obvious reasons why our jails are filled with teenage offenders who get intimate with fellow teenagers as they experiment in their adolescence, it is unfortunate that parliament has refused to make changes to such laws,” said Maraga.

 

 

 

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