Willy Mutunga has been a good friend of mine for many years. Here in Toronto when he was doing post-graduate law studies, he was very much involved with us in our work around human rights in Kenya.
We used to publish HAKI, a Kenyan Human Rights Publication and Willy gave us articles for that. It was very respectful for him to do that. We were an underground movement at the time.
And Willy met us and talked to us very directly. My writing name at that time was Jane Mutai for HAKI. My son still jokes about that when he calls me Jane and I say that is me.
Too bad his mom from Eritrea is not around anymore because she was always the one who told the boy to push me. She told him, don’t let him (me) just talk.
In Kenya just after Dr. Mutunga was appointed the Chief Justice of Kenya he held a big community discussion and conference at Nairobi University at the famous Gandhi Hall and I was there with my friends to talk to our new Chief Justice.
In that discussion, I was lucky to be given the last chance to ask a question. I asked Willy how the Supreme Court will implement Chapter Six of the 2010 constitution which stipulated that thugs and criminals cannot hold public offices in Kenya.
Read: Dr. Willy Mutunga Then. Now I don’t know!
Willy did not answer the question. He danced around it which is normal when you are in a political dilemma. My message to him then and now is that the 2010 constitution which was supposed to liberate our country from the reign of thugs and criminals was a fraud and will fail Kenyans in every way possible.
Today we are dealing with the BBI debacle which some thought was a crime because our 2010 constitution was a gift from God, one of their gods, and that the Kenyan constitution was “unamendable”.
Nonsense. That was the ruling of the Supreme Court just a few days ago. So yes Kenyans can and will amend their constitution as they so wish when they decide to do that.
Back to Chapter Six of our 2010 constitution. This is what shocked me the most. Aisha Jumwa one of the new heroes in Kenya in the Ruto world, was facing a charge of murder in a case in which she actually invaded a person’s house as he was being shot by her bodyguards.
The judge in the case ruled that because Aisha Jumwa is fighting to be elected as governor of Kilifi county the case will be postponed to September 29, 2022, to give her time to do her campaigns.
Our so-called new efficient judiciary was telling Kenyans that a suspected murderer should concentrate on her election plans and to hell with her murder charges. So if Aisha wins her governor’s seat and her boss Ruto becomes our next president then the murder case will be thrown into the garbage.
I am not making this up. We live in a country today where criminals are our new heroes. Ruto is our new Che Guevara for some people who call themselves human rights activists in Kenya. The same Ruto who killed their own friends.
Now this invented idea that Ruto after losing the August 2022 election will do a handshake with Raila and it will be a Raila/Ruto government to me is just nonsense.
Ruto will never do a handshake with Raila because he knows how stupid he will look doing that.
Unlike his lunatic twitter screamers who have no interest in any logical thinking, Ruto already knows he will lose the election and will have to retire from politics pretty much.
Ruto is going to try his best to get a parliamentary presence to help him negotiate with President Raila Amolo Odinga.
Once Ruto loses his bid to be our president, something he thinks his god ordained for us, he is going to call Raila and tell him he wants to retire completely. Ruto will ask one thing. He will ask the new president to protect him from any criminal prosecutions on land and other public theft cases.
It is going to be a nightmare for Raila who has premised his campaign on the fight to end corruption in Kenya. Raila will not be in a position to give William Ruto blanket coverage for his numerous public theft cases. They could work on something but it will not be a handshake. Both of them can’t take that.
And I have one more fight with Dr. Mutunga. He was quoted a few days ago being mad bout Field Marshall Muthoni wa Kirima having her 70-year-old dreadlocks shaven by Mama Ngina Kenyatta.
I was shocked that after all these years that our country has completely ignored the likes of Muthoni wa Kirima that human rights advocates like Dr. Mutunga don’t want to care about her except for her dreadlocks.
Read: Talking about the mothers and the Freedom Fighters: How about Field Marshal Muthoni wa Kirima?
How does she live? How is her home? We pay William Ruto millions a day to trash our country. What have we ever done for the Muthoni wa Kirimas of our country?
Field Marshall Muthoni is not a piece of art. She is a human being and a Kenyan with very few equals at any level.
Has our country ever done anything for people like her? No. Do we just want her to keep her dreadlocks as some kind of a museum for us to be happy about?
Is that really our role as human rights fighters in our country. Not for me. I can say that with no doubt.
In my response to the issue, I asked that Field Marshall Muthoni and people like her who have worked so hard to develop an independent Kenya be welcomed at the Madaraka Day celebrations this year and let Kenyans hear from them.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
