Raila urges the Executive to table evidence that led to rejection of six judges

The Orange Democratic Movement Party leader Raila Odinga has asked the Executive arm of government to reveal the issues that led to the disqualification of six of the 40 judges recommended for appointment by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC).

In a statement to the media on Saturday, the ODM leader urged the President, the Speakers of the National Assembly and the Senate, as well as the Chief Justice, to seek common ground in their respective powers as soon as possible in order to achieve more effective government.

“In the current stand-off between the Judiciary and the Executive, this sense of the intertwined fate of the branches of government seems lost,” Raila said.

At the same time, he challenged the Executive branch of government to share the concerns and evidence that led to the rejection of the six judges with the Judiciary and the public.

“The country deserves an informed debate rather than a shouting match on this critical matter. The people of Kenya deserve to know why the various branches of their government take the positions they do on an issue critical to nation as appointment of judges,” Raila said.

According to the former Prime Minister, Kenya cannot survive a war between its institutions.

“Before we gave ourselves the 2010 Constitution, we had gone through an era where this doctrine had been abused and the Executive branch of government had interfered with the functions of the other branches, making democratic governance impossible,” Raila said.

The ODM leader says that since the birth of the current Kenyan constitution, the three branches of government have been locked in a competitive relationship instead of complementary that has seen the nation swing from one absurd state of affairs to another.

“The fact is that no one branch of government can help Kenyans solve their problems without the help of the other,” the ODM leader said on Saturday. “No one institution can become the sole and undisputed liberator of the people of Kenya.”

According to Raila, any attempt by any one arm of the government to outshine the others or to show that it’s the one that matters the most only works to hurt the common Kenyan and the interests of the nation.