President Uhuru Kenyatta led Jubilee Party has found itself at odds with former Chief Justice Dr. willy Mutunga a day after it wrote an open letter to his successor, David Maraga.
On Wednesday, JP Secretary General Raphael Tuju wrote an open letter to Maraga accusing him of poor leadership in the Judiciary, bias and impunity.
Tuju in a three-page letter expressed that his party felt that the Judiciary has been favouring the opposition.
He cited seven instances where Judiciary had allegedly made decisions that favoured.
In one of the instances according to the Standard, Tuju cited the ruling issued by the Supreme Court when Jubilee sought the court’s intervention after Raila Odinga withdrew from the October 26 repeat presidential polls.
He accused the apex court of issuing a post facto date which denied Jubilee a hearing on the matter.
“The Supreme Court saw nothing urgent with this petition to the court, and gave a hearing of October 27th, a post defacto date. This was like a naughty wink to NASA to continue with their contempt of the Supreme Court,” he noted.
Tuju further said that despite the court upholding Uhuru’s win in the repeat polls, NASA defied court orders and went ahead to inaugurate Raila as the People’s President.
He said Maraga failed to offer leadership to the Judiciary days to the unofficial swearing-in of Raila saying every Judge that every judge was at liberty to rule the way they deemed fit for cases before them.
However, in a protest letter via twitter on Thursday, Mutunga noted that Tuju’s move was “arrogance of power and utter disrespect of the institution of the chief justice as head of the judiciary.”
The former CJ pointed out that Tuju could have used other avenues to express his concern such as the Judicial Service Commission and National Council on the Administration of Justice.
Also, Tuju according to Mutunga could have used the Office of Judiciary Ombudsperson which processes complaints against judicial officers.
But, said Mutunga, he opted to address Maraga directly to intimidate him.
“He could have filed the complaint with the JSC. I believe his aim was to intimidate CJ Maraga personally.”
Since Monday, Jubilee administration has made moves aimed at bringing changes to the Judiciary which have been seen to be part of a promise by Uhuru to “revisit” the third arm of government.