I Will Not Resign! CJ Maraga Warns as Judiciary Crumbles

Chief Justice David Maraga has said he will not resign even as operations in the third arm of the Government ground to a halt.

A tough-talking Maraga revealed for the first time the frustrations he had been subjected to at the helm of the Judiciary even as other arms of the Government had a field day.

Addressing the Press in Nairobi, Maraga said the Executive and Parliament have been treating the Judiciary as a foster child and with utter disrespect.

Chief Justice David Maraga. PHOTO: Courtesy

Maraga highlighted a case in which his predecessor CJ Willie Mutunga got into an angry exchange after airport officials refused to process his travel documents, asking him to wait for clearance from the Ministry.

He said resigning was nowhere in his cards, adding that it would not solve the current crisis at the Judiciary and that it would also make it hard for the person to succeed him.

The Supreme Court President would highlight incidents where he had been treated with contempt, starting off with Mashujaa Day Celebrations where the MC refused to acknowledge his presence.

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“The CJ has no Mercedes; when we applied,  we were told that we do not want wastage. It is wastage to buy a CJ a Mercedes 500, but it’s not a wastage to buy the two speakers one,” the CJ lamented.

Maraga also lamented the ‘ill-treatment’ of the Judiciary after he said he has to wait to be cleared to access State House after ‘junior officers’ like Cabinet Secretaries and Principal Secretaries.

The CJ also noted that he was denied the use of a Mercedes S500 despite the same vehicles being used to chauffeur Speakers of the Senate and National Assembly who also get VIP traffic clearance.

Maraga noted that his entitlement to traffic clearance was only reinstated after intense lobbying. The Government, however, maintained that the exclusion of Maraga from the list was an inadvertent “mistake”.

How it All Began

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Kenya Parliament. PHOTO: Courtesy

The problems at the Judiciary began when Parliament cut its budget from a proposed Sh31.2 billion to Sh14.5 billion.

In a further cut that grounded critical judicial processes to a halt, Treasury would further slice the allocation to a paltry Sh11.5 billion.

Last week alone, some 15,0000 cases were halted as the cash crunch took effect. 60 Mobile courts spread across far-flung regions of the country were also recalled.

CJ Maraga also warned that judges may not attend court sessions if the budget fails to be relooked. He also noted that the WiFi in courts would also be cut out to re-align to the budget cuts

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