President William Ruto has appointed six judges nominated by the Judicial Service Commission three years ago.
The President has appointed Korir Weldon Korir, Aggrey Muchelule, George Odunga and Joel Ngugi as judges of the Court of Appeal, while Makori Evans Kiago and Judith Omange have been appointed as judges of the Environment and Land Court.
Earlier in the day, President Ruto said the six will be sworn in tomorrow at State House Nairobi.
Justices Muchelule, Odunga, Korir and Ngugi were nominated by JSC for promotion to the Court of Appeal in August 2019 while Mr Makori (Chief magistrate) and Ms Omange (High Court Registrar) were recommended for promotion to be judges in the Employment and Labour Relations Court.
Without disclosing details, former President Uhuru Kenyatta snubbed their appointments claiming that they were “tainted” and selectively appointed their 34 colleagues in June 2021.
“To further demonstrate my commitment to the independence of the Judiciary, this afternoon I will appoint the six judges already nominated for appointment to the Court of Appeal (and High Court) three years ago,” said President Ruto in his speech. “I will consolidate the place of the Judiciary by respecting all judicial decisions in my regime.”
The legal dispute on the appointment of the six judges is pending at the appellate court in an appeal filed by the Attorney-General, President Kenyatta and the Chief Justice.
Although the decision of President Ruto to appoint the judges is deemed to have solved the dispute, the pending appeal is likely to come up with directions and interpretation of the law on what is the legal recourse if a President declines to perform his/her constitutional duty of appointing judges. This includes whether the Head of State can be sidestepped in the process.
Currently, the Court of Appeal has 26 judges, with the appointment of the four judges, Chief Justice Martha Koome will have met the statutory establishment of 30 judges.
“The appointment of the judges to the Court of Appeal and High Court and pledged support for the Judiciary are highly welcome signs,” said Law Society of Kenya president Eric Theuri.
CJ Koome is now likely to shift her focus to the High Court which has a shortage of judges. It currently has 82 judges against a statutory maximum establishment of 200. JSC is set to start interviews for the recruitment of 20 judges.
Relating to the Judiciary’s financial constraints, President Ruto said his administration will scale allocate the Judiciary by an additional Sh3 billion annually for the next five years.
“These resources will support the bottom-up scaling of justice by increasing the number of small claims courts from the current 25 to 100,” he said. He added that his administration will work with the Judiciary to build High Courts in the remaining seven counties and magistrates courts in the remaining 123 sub-counties.
The Judiciary’s ongoing digitisation programme will also be supported, he said.
